No tattoos. No tank tops. No Burbury.
Posted by Andrew Millar on August 2nd, 2007 at 5:15pm
I’ve come across two instances lately where the journey to grow new markets has ended in a travellers’ tale of woe.
The first concerns the exclusively British brand Burbury. They saw profits in shifting their market away from the upper class Brits and Japanese tourists to a broader more youthful base. So they introduced their famous signature tartan to the baseball cap.
It became fashionable… unfortunately with Soccer Yobs. Which led to a quote from one fashion pundit, ‘No one expected to be mugged by someone wearing the same Burbury as you are.’ Once the hooligans got hold of the tartan as team colours, forgers filled the markets with fakes and a once exclusive brand was decimated. The wearing of Burbury is now banned in some pubs in London.
The other instance involves BMW in America. They too wanted to drive into new markets and hired Chiat/Day to bring in a more youthful market. The campaign, on paper seemed brilliant – a series of 7 minute films made by famous directors, who had total control over the execution of a simple brief, the car is the hero and it must star Clive Owen. These films were released on the internet and became case studies of viral marketing. The results were very mixed. Two years later Chiat/Day no longer had the account. While BMW sales were up in performance cars, there was a huge slump in sales of the lesser spec vehicles. But instances of crime involving pre-owned BMWs became a talking point. All Chiat/Day had done was to align the brand with outlaws – anyone who wanted to step outside the norm to get what they wanted. In a corporate sense that might be fine, but too many of the films literally involved people dodging bullets.
BMW North America and Burbury are now fighting to regain control of their brands. And everyone who is targeting growth in ‘new markets’ would do well to remember the old expression… ‘Be careful what you pray for, you just might get it.’
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