Month: June 2013

Brand Experience, brand values, branding

Jamie Oliver in Boots – And then he rolled over

It was a good effort, but for me was doomed from the start. Jamie Oliver in Boots. More about volume than brand alignment.

It’s a bit like Asda selling Bose, Bentley or maybe a premium food range by Heston Blumenthal. The brands just don’t connect and their audiences have almost no overlap, so they are doomed to fail from the start. The danger for the premium brand is that it becomes tarnished by hanging out with the cheaper one.

A while ago I predicted they would need to include it in the Boots meal deal for it to succeed. And then more recently, they blinked and made a mini meal deal with an alignment with Innocent – which was a good thing.

And now they have gone one better (cheaper) again and made a real meal deal with a drink and a snack for the fixed price of £4.95. This is almost as cheap as some of the sandwiches on their own. It may be a last roll (or salad) of the dice, but it does feel like an important price point to have ducked under and for me is now far more likely to succeed. What it will do for the long term brand equity of Jamie Oliver is less sure, but it’s a step downwards that will be very hard to recover from.

Jamies does (cheap) lunch via the meal deal at Boots
Jamies does (cheap) lunch via the meal deal at Boots

Thanks for the picture Leo.

Brand Experience, brand values, branding, Life, Social media

A bit of a problem for the Abercrombie and Fitch brand

When you set out to create a brand you can design in certain criteria. By pricing it high, you exclude certain buying groups, by not even making XL sizes for women, you naturally exclude the larger ladies. They also place ‘beautiful people’ in a state of undress outside their stores as greeters. These decisions form the basis of the whole brand and who you target and appeal to. I am far to old/fat to be in their target audience (but so is their own MD!) and I am now quite proud to say I have never owned any of their products.

Mike Jeffries Abercrombie and Fitch Managing Director
Mike Jeffries Abercrombie and Fitch Managing Director – looking a little like a bad advertisement for facial surgery – and certainly not in his own target audience

But Abercrombie and Fitch have taken this brand separation to a new level by destroying all damaged or returned goods rather than giving them to the homeless, as many other brands do. All very deliberate and all very elitist. the assumption being that seeing homeless people in A&F would embarrass their own beautiful customers.

But here comes the brand backlash. 7.5 million views in less than a month, and growing fast. Watch this space. It may be the next Gerald Ratner moment for the A&F brand.