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Shopping Centers Today -> December 2002
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VALUE OF BRANDING TOUTED AT FALL CONFERENCE
By Debra Hazel
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| Michael Francis |
MINNEAPOLIS — Branding grows ever more critical in an increasingly competitive retail environment, top retail, development and advertising executives told delegates to this year’s ICSC Fall Management and Marketing Conference.
“You don’t need a crystal ball to know it’s been a tough year for retail,” said Tina Wilcox, president and CEO of Fame, a locally based retail brand agency, who consulted on the rebranding of Wilsons Leather and runs a laboratory where she tests consumer reactions to products and concepts. “Only the toughest brands survived.”
More than 900 shopping center management and marketing professionals attended the meeting, held at the Hyatt Regency in September.
In Wilsons’ case, the retailer needed to refocus on a younger audience and shed its image of strictly cold-weather merchandise. An even higher-profile branding initiative, carried out by Target Corp., involved a change in merchandise as well as marketing. Target made its bull’s-eye trademark a symbol for discount retailing with style by breaking some advertising rules early on — the ads didn’t mention Target.
“You might think it takes a lot of brass to market without using the name of the store,” said Michael Francis, Target’s senior vice president of marketing. Yet that was precisely Target’s strategy, beginning with its entry into the New York City metropolitan area in 1998. Uncertain of its fame outside its Midwest base, the company held a gala opening of its first unit in New Jersey and even went so far as to stick bills on construction site boardings.
Branding a retailer is one thing, however, and finding its niche is another.
“We knew we couldn’t compete solely on price with the 900-pound gorilla of discounters,” namely Wal-Mart, Francis said. “Kmart tried that, and look where it got them.”
Instead, Target decided that its competitors also included department stores, which have been losing focus for years (see story, Designing a comeback). The company didn’t hold back. It contracted with fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, architect Michael Graves, makeup artist Sonia Kashuk, and manufacturers Calphalon and Stiffel to create exclusive product lines for the store.
“You expect to find Tide at a discounter, but not fashionable cropped pants,” Francis said. “The philosophy was simple: Just because our core guest likes a deal doesn’t exclude her from good design.”
Young directors, using hip music to convey the changes at the store, created television ads. With the bull’s-eye now firmly ensconced as Target’s symbol, the campaign is evolving. Vendors are now approaching the chain to include their products in the ads and share the costs.
Meanwhile, the retailer’s ads have gotten more radical. In a recent campaign, it has dropped the logo and is just using the color red to represent the store.
Malls are also using branding to survive and thrive. The 10-year-old Mall of America has achieved brand status through such special events as concerts, personal appearances and fashion shows, and through pioneering initiatives that include marketing to teens and now tweens. The center has succeeded so well that it is better known than some of the United States’ largest corporations, according to a survey cited by Maureen Bausch, the megamall’s director of business development.
“We’re not Coke or McDonald’s, but we’re ahead of General Electric,” she said.
Techniques may vary, but creating a successful brand means telling a story, noted Chicago-based marketing consultant Adrienne Weiss.
“Become a club that people want to be a part of,” Weiss advised. “Build your own rituals. Starbucks has its own language, customs and ceremonies.”
The meeting concluded with the presentation of the 2002 MAXI Awards, which honor outstanding achievement in management and marketing programs through the previous year (see special supplement to October SCT). A special award category was created this year for centers that organized events to aid victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
 | Current Issue December 2008 |