Jack Willy, Jack Wills and what to do when passing off is all in the name of charity

It is no secret to this blog – and to pretty much anyone that knows me – that I am a long-time, ardent fan of Jack Wills.

So this evening, when I started to pick up tweets about Jack Willy for the first time – a brand new charity initiative in support of prostate cancer awareness – I initially thought, bravo JW for having enough gumption and banter around their own brand values to create a tongue-in-cheek charity campaign.

Or so I thought.

After a bit of digging on the site it became apparent that they are ‘BTW, NOT Jack Wills‘ and are instead playing on the renowned middle class clothing brand’s wide appeal. And, in for a penny, in for a pound, the site invokes JW’s look, feel, font, tag-line (‘outfitters for the general’ – rather than gentry), image/model look style and web design.

They’re hot on Twitter, they engage with their posse of fans on Facebook – they even run an ‘Ambassador‘ program whereby enthusiastic consumers of their clothing can earn themselves free stash by being photographed in the gear and posting their shots back to the brand. Any of this sounding familiar?

Now whether you’re a fan of the original brand or not, this led me to thinking: as a brand manager or owner, what would I do? I’m in charge of a hugely successful, internationally expanding, young, influential fashion label and a charity initiative sets up for a very worthy cause, riding on the coat tails of my brand’s image (and poking a little fun in its ribs at the same time). How do I feel about this? What are my options?

I figure they are, namely, these:

1) Do nothing

2) Do nothing – yet. Ride it out. It’s a start-up so wait and see what kind of following it gets (and what comments you get as a result) before making any move. (It’s got them this blog post for a start…)

3) Be reactively supportive. When fans, consumers or press ask the question, ‘So whad’ya make of all this Jack Willy stuff then?’, respond with a reasonably non-committal ‘We think their cause is an incredibly worthy one and we wish them all the best.’ Or even something a tad more engaged such as ‘and we’re honoured they saw the value in the Jack Wills brand to help promote awareness for their campaign’. But kept fairly at arm’s length and not promoting an association

4) Be proactively supportive. Seek out the organisers and reach out to them. Discover more about the set-up and explore the option of an official partnership. In an if-you-can’t-beat-em-join-em kinda way. Cross-promotion could work in your favour (though on first impression from the site, significantly TBC whether the Jack Willy gang would want an official JW stamp or seal of approval.)

5) Be privately opposed. The public voice decries any association with the charity – no negative comments per se, but making it clear there is no connection. Privately, approach with a view to enforcing a stronger message of complete independence from the JW brand in order to put an end to the passing off (which, frankly, it undeniably is as it took me at least 5 minutes to find the ‘NOT Jack Wills’ statement. Granted it was mobile web, but I’m not exactly web illiterate)

6) Be publicly opposed. Dangerous territory, but if a brand feels its values have been compromised, sometimes it should go all out to protect those. Harder if it’s a worthy cause, but if it were an organisation of deplorable or questionable (or competitive) intent, a brand wouldn’t hesitate. Just because it’s for ‘charidee’, should it act differently?

Of course, it might all be a double bluff, and maybe the Northern Irish founders really do have a link to JW. Maybe Pete Williams gave his blessing. But it doesn’t look that way to me. And whatever stance the brand takes, they should decide a position fast because the questions will come – if they haven’t already.

 

Jack WILLS Spring look (that's WILLS. With an S.)

 

So what would I do? I’d rule out #6 immediately – the cause is far too worthy and the objective well-meaning to bring in the heavies. For the time being, I’d also avoid #5, but consider a conversation in this territory later down the line if a supportive angle is decided against. Your brand equity is your livelihood – regardless of the well-meaning nature of potential impostors.

It’s probably too early days for #4 and you would need buy-in and weighty consideration from all stake-holders within the organisation before going down this route. But it’s not out of the question. So I think my take would be a combination of #2 and #3 – with a skew towards the latter. As a light-hearted, fun-loving brand, unofficially supporting these guys would be a strong way to demonstrate not taking yourselves too seriously.

Whatever happens, don’t do #1. Even if, at the very least, you prepare an internal reactive brand position to respond to queries in this area. Silence is damaging – especially for a brand whose lifeblood is its highly engaged dialogue with its avid fan base. They will ask, and a brand always needs a (consistent) answer.

And in the meantime, go buy yourself a Jack Willy hoodie. Go on. It’s for a good cause.

My Little Pony as you’ve never seen her before

For any of you who grew up in the 80′s – girls especially, or at least had a younger sister – you will be no stranger to the My Little Pony brand. A less natural looking animal you probably couldn’t conceive, but hours of fun. I LOVED them. Pink, purple, baby blue… hair you could plat, brush, cut (and sometimes that grew back)… with random cute hearts/rainbows/clouds printed on their haunch. As a six-year-old girl, what is not to love?

(And throw in a beauty stable/salon with clip on accessories – the envy of many a MLP fan – and you’d be lost for days).

Well, enter Finnish artist Mari Kasurinan, who has charmingly transformed the iconic toy into celebrity portraits. As the Telegraph featured last week, there is a whole collection of these little creations and they are so darned cute I felt I needed them on this blog too.

So, begging the permission of Ms. Kasurinan, I have picked out the best of the bunch below. I hope they fetch a fortune. As with their predecessors, each is unique and thus highly collectible. But once you have one, you just want them all.

Everyone always had a favourite, which is yours?

Marilyn Monroe (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Vivienne Westwood (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Lady Gaga (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

..another Gaga (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Johnny Depp (as the Mad Hatter) (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Michael Jackson (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Rorschach (Watchmen) (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Wonder Woman (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Mr Spock (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Batman & Robin (c) Mari Kasurinan/Rex Features

Tickled PINK by Victoria’s Secret’s new NFL range

Supermodels Behati Prinsloo and Candice Swanepoel stopped by the NFL Draft back in April to walk the red carpet and preview the new collection (thejetsetgirls.com)

Lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret today launches their take on NFL merchandise with a brand new collection from their PINK range.

The partnership sees two very different brands come together to provide the NFL’s female audience base with some cute apparel, bringing new customers to the VS PINK brand, and introducing NFL colours into the wardrobes of PINK customers all over the U.S. Everybody wins.

Forever a fan of the PINK VS range, and always on the look-out for cute girlified NFL wear, this was pretty exciting news for my Wednesday morning.

In turns out that two of the lovely VS Angels premiered a couple of pieces back in April, providing some welcome entertainment for the players and entourages in attendance at the NFL Draft at Radio City in New York. And today, the full collection launches online and in store.

The VS deal covers 13 teams from the NFL: Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears, Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, New England Patriots, New York Giants, New York Jets, Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Diego Chargers, Washington Redskins and Carolina Panthers.

The PINK brand has always had a huge presence in the social media space, with very active Twitter and Facebook portals, and they maximised the use of this yesterday in building buzz for the collection’s launch today. In a Draft-like fashion, each team that had been chosen as part of the range was unveiled gradually over the course of the day between 9am and 9pm, and announced with an image on the Facebook page. Each of the 13 images generated thousands of  ‘like’s and hundreds of comments.

As always, the brand is pretty difficult to purchase in the U.K. and I should imagine it is unlikely that the NFL collection will reach the few concessions that do retail over here. A shame, given the hard work that the NFL is doing to develop and grow its international fan-base. In recent years,VS has been able to offer international shipping (starting at $30 for UK customers) but you’re better off hitting up your U.S. buddies to do a bit of personal shopping on your behalf.

Though sadly, not one of our adopted NFL ‘home’ teams over here have had their franchise picked up. For the past 3 years, the big NFL party has come to London town in October offering us a regular season game at Wembley. This year is no different with the San Francisco 49ers generously offering us one of their home fixtures as they take on the Denver Broncos on October 31st. While VS PINK has developed the Bronco’s colours into their range, the 49ers were not included. Neither were the Dolphins, the Saints or the Bucs.

That aside, when the collection launches online later today, I will be first in line for a browse. Game on.

Washington Redskins jersey from the PINK NFL collection (c) 2010 Victoria's Secret PINK

The Power of Branding

A little lesson in marketing for a Thursday afternoon.

I found this a while ago – I think on some eternal email forward – and I love it.

For anyone that doesn’t understand our crazy world, here’s a bit of a breakdown in terms everyone can understand:

1) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You go up to her and say, “Hi, I’m great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Direct Marketing.

2) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You give your friend a fiver. She goes up and says “Hi, my friend over there is great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Advertising.

3) You go to a party and see an attractive girl across the room. You somehow get her mobile number. You call and chat her up a while and then say “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Tele-Marketing.

4) You go to a party and see an attractive girl across the room. You recognize her. You walk up to her, refresh her memory and get her to laugh and giggle and then suggest, “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Customer Relationship Management.

5) You go to a party and you see an attractive girl across the room. You stand straight, you talk soft and smooth, you open the door for the ladies, you smile like a dream, you set an aura around you playing the Mr. Gentleman and then you move up to the girl and say, “Hi, I am great in bed, how about it?”

- That’s Hard Selling.

6) You go to a party, you see an attractive girl across the room. SHE COMES OVER and says, “Hi, I hear you’re great in bed, how about it?”

- Now THAT is the power of Branding.

All jokes aside, it does rather sum up the life blood of our industry: relationships.

90210′s product placement horrors

TV product placement in its various incarnations is something that I love to keep track of. We see it with the greatest presence (and price tag) on the silver screen, but we are starting to see it more and more on the small screen too – especially in American shows targeted at a youth audience. Unfortunately, the more common it becomes, the less sophisticated the methods seem to be.

Granted, the US have very different rules on brand presence, but with the recent return of 90210 to E4, I needed to share some screen grabs of a couple of season 1 episodes where the product placement is nothing short of paid-for full-screen advertising (and thus I have tagged this post appropriately).

I love the show and I don’t usually find this kind of over-exposure offensive as such, but 90210′s integration of brand into scene is so unsubtle that it is starting to become intrusive even for me. The two prime examples (taken from the previous, first, season) are Dr.Pepper and T-Mobile’s Sidekick mobile phone.

So you could watch the clips in the context of the show, I had found the clips on YouTube, but as is increasingly the way these things go, the clips in question have been removed by a CBS copyright claims. A shame, but if you are studying product placement methods (and the clangers therein) it is almost worth buying season 1 just to spot them (I’m sure you will find more).

Dr. Pepper makes its first appearance behind the bar (and front of shot ON the bar too)...

...and gets prime placement for the close-up

It even (bizarrely) gets wall placement in the cafe to cover the reverse camera angle and (even more bizarrely) gets a reversed placement on the bar in the foreground

Naomi got so over-excited at receiving a message on her T-Mobile Sidekick that she had to taunt Annie with it...

...and the producers felt the need for the obligatory close-up

Can anyone NOT read the vertical T-Mobile branding? Well fear not, if you are blind, Naomi gives it a verbal mention too.

All that said, while I still won’t touch Dr.Pepper because it remains vile-tasting no matter how much screen time Hollywood gives it, I do now quite want a Sidekick. And I did write this blog post about it. Go figure. Maybe we can learn from the Americans yet.

Landmark decision to lift ban on television product placement

I have been meaning to post on the product placement horrors in one of my fave US teen dramas 90210 for some time, and that post is still forthcoming – but in the meantime, a quick update on recent developments in that area for the UK broadcast market.

Ever in the shadow of its more commercially open American cousin, the British broadcasting industry has always been hampered by government guidelines restricting product placement on our TV screens. Not for much longer.

Under new legislation announced by the Government on 9 February, product placement will be allowed in UK terrestrial television programmes. In his statement, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary Ben Bradshaw said that maintaining a ban on television product placement would “jeopardise the competitiveness” of UK programme makers “at a time when this crucial part of our creative industries needs all the help we can give it.”

This decision follows the introduction of the Audiovisual Media Regulations 2009 on 19 December 2009, which allowed some product placement in ‘on-demand’ television and television-like services.  However, until this week’s Government announcement, there were no exceptions to the prohibition on television product placement. The question of television product placement has proved a contentious issue, with many stakeholders expressing concerns about the potential adverse impact on the editorial independence of broadcasters and on viewers’ trust in what they see on television. The strength of opinion is evident in that the Government received almost 1480 responses during its recent consultation.

For this reason, the Government has decided to “proceed with caution” and has decided to introduce further safeguards beyond those set out in the AVMS Regulations 2009. Products and services such as alcohol, food and drinks high in fat, salt and sugar (HFSS), infant follow-on milk and gambling will all be excluded from the new product placement rules, and BBC licence funded programmes will also remain unaffected.

Further, it is significant that the new rules will not take effect immediately, as the Government want to give Ofcom the opportunity to run a public consultation and make detailed changes to its Code. However, it is anticipated that shows including product placement will be being shown on terrestrial TV by the end of the year, in what could herald a new era for television advertising and broadcasting.

Watch out for a pint of the black stuff being ordered in the Old Vic this side of Christmas.

Jack Wills does Haute Couture

OK, well not exactly , but this is the closest they’ve been yet to real high fashion exclusivity.

Pyrie Dress - Jack Wills Christmas Collection

The brand new Christmas collection launched last week and this season’s handbook is the best ever (the creative alone deserves another post at a later date).

The very first item to launch itself off the page is the Pyrie dress (above), available solely in the Check (with a very similar Kassian design also on offer in black). Strictly Limited Edition – there are only 20 of these fine pieces up for purchase – each 100% silk dress is individually hand crafted at a not inconsiderable cost of £798 a pop. In the words of older sibling brand Aubin & Wills: exclusively for the discerning.

Highly desirable and only available to those able to fit neatly into a size 10 (so not quite haute couture made-to-measure but close enough), the Pyrie is quite the statement must-have piece of the season. And if you’re balking slightly at the price, comfort yourself with the assurance that only 19 other girls in the world will own the very same.

A far cry from the Balmain sequins of my earlier post which, as the ever-growing trend expands past tipping point, are likely to have a presence at every Christmas party across the country.

JW, always looking to expand without losing desirable exclusivity, has stepped up a gear and held aloft a seasonal design that even a regular JW consumer might struggle to afford. But look at the impeccable timing: launched in the Christmas catalogue just when every little girl and boy across the land is putting together their Christmas whishlist. It might break our banks, but possibly not Santa’s/Mummy & Daddy’s.

Fear not: for those who can’t quite stretch even to the regular line, who gleefully poor over the rails at the Bicester Village outlet, take a look at what’s launching online:

Though of course, exclusively by invitation only.  And there’s a HUGE waiting list. Natch.

JW’s Fabulous(ly British) T’s

Some sharp direct e-marketing from JW this morning. Aside from the fact the T’s themselves are pretty darn cute, playing on the Fabulously… tag within an array of rainbow shades, the presentation of the message is adorable.

I’ve seen a few creative pitch decks being put together in a similar fashion to the above lately, and execs seem to be taking their cue from fashion houses and graphic designers on whose labours of love the above format seems to be based. The standard Powerpoint text box is dead – laboriously photographing collections of Post-Its on a white board is the new way to express your creative ideas (and it is worth it).

As if a snapshot had been taken directly from the desk of a designer at JW HQ (staples still intact in the corner of the crumpled notepaper), there seems a desire to stamp authenticity on what could have become a standard e-mailout. The hand-drawn augmentation of the well-established ‘Fabulously British’ tag now synonymous with the brand, is a cheeky rebellious twist at once conveying both credibility and a brand personality not afraid to challenge convention. Rather reflective of their student audience I thought.

And one final thing – pretty brave for a fashion brand to launch a whole new range of T’sjust as the air turns crisp and people are starting to dig out scarves, layers and overcoats. But when you’re a JW staple, who cares about bucking the trend? Sling it over a Raubelin Henley with a scarf and a beanie and you’re good to go.

Jack Wills Freshers’ Tour, sponsored by… Jack Wills

Just yesterday at Synergy towers, there was some collective musing going on around how the face of sponsorship could change in the next few decades. And that got me thinking about that ever-elusive demographic – the 16-24 year olds – to see how they might be running businesses and consuming media in 25 years’ time.

One area of interest is how immune (or not) youth of today have become to brand presence in their everyday lives. Do they reject it (oft-quoted myth)? Do they embrace it (when it suits them)? Do they challenge it to give them added value before giving it their valuable attention (‘what’s in it for me’)? Or do they ignore it altogether?

Or, have they come to expect it as par for the course of being entertained? I wondered if the ‘such and such, brought to you by…’ had become such a ubiquitous tag to music concerts / sporting fixtures / televised events, that people in 10 or 20 years might actually notice an absence of brand more than its presence. After all, I was hearing this mandatory credit line before I could even read, from the loveable muppets of Sesame Street (‘Sesame Street was brought to you by the number 8 and letters D and M…’ etc.)

But one interesting application of the sponsorship concept was brought to me today by Britain’s favourite University Outfitter, Jack Wills.

Having just returned from a summer of fun in New England, the brand’s bright young marketing things are about to embark on another grand tour of the UK’s trendiest universities. JW will be at a Freshers’ Week near you in the next few weeks, combining their fabulously British fashion with cutting edge, fresh new music – via the brand’s evolving unofficial music label, JWUnsigned.

But what caught my eye in the creative flyer for the Tour, was the sponsorship line. Bearing in mind that this is a Jack-Wills event, delivered as a music tour produced by a Jack Wills sub-brand, it is ‘sponsored by’ – wait for it – a Jack Wills denim range. This year’s JWUnsigned Freshers Tour is brought to you by No.350-4-842 – the brand’s denim clothing line.

This I feel points to some interesting signs about the presence that sponsorship has in the lives of youth culture today. Sponsorship in its basic sense – brand-pays-rights-holder – cannot apply here given that both the sponsor and property are from the same stable. So one assumes that JW is using the Tour platform to leverage awareness of its 350-4-842 denim as almost a stand-alone brand, instantly recognizable in and of itself but crucially as part of the Jack Wills family.

But I sense that there must be an implicit acceptance here by the Tour’s marketeers that their target consumers are so expectant of a live event being sponsored, it has become a necessary element of the Tour name. ‘Sponsored by…’ acts in this case as a ready-made stamp of officialdom: all big music events are sponsored so the JWUnsigned Tour needs to be too, in order to gain stature and acceptance within the youth marketplace. 

St. Andrew’s, Leeds, Edinburgh, London, Bristol, Nottingham, Guildford and Brighton all appear to be on the list of host cities for the Tour events, and I’m intrigued to see what these will look like. How will JW use the opportunity to engage with their fans? Will they be actively spreading the word of their ‘Worn in but not Worn Out’ denim range to a captive audience of indie music fans? Will the bands be wearing the jeans during all their sets? Or is that ‘sponsored by…’ tag ultimately just that – a tagline?

And most interesting of all – will the legions of JW-loving Freshers either notice or, perhaps more importantly, care?

Ultimo’s latest range is just Peachy

 

Loving Peaches’ campaign for Ultimo underwear, from which a second batch of pictures were released to the press today. Guaranteeing coverage in Nationals, London papers and all the weekly celeb gossip/fashion mags, Ultimo have made a smart move signing up Sir Bob’s eldest and most notorious daughter to front their latest range.

And if you fancy more regular updates from the world of Peaches, follow her @peaches_g on Twitter.