Birmingham Store Visit

3rd March 2011

We made a trip to Birmingham to visit the store as we found out at the Nottingham store was as franchise and not actually owned by Lacoste.

During our visit we looked around the store, observed consumers and spoke to the store manage about the brand.

Ian, the store manager, classed Lacoste as "Contemporary Classic", he went on to discus the different Lacoste consumer and how their is a big difference between the UK and the European / US consumer. He said that the European / US consumer saw the brand as a high end and luxury whereas the image of the brand has been tainted in th UK due to the tracksuit culture in the north of the country.

He said that their average customer is between 20-35 and very brand conscious. When defining competitors he mentioned Ralph Lauren but said these days everyone is a competitor.

When we asked about their working ethos Ian told us that as staff they do not push for a purchase and try to create a relaxing experience for the customer.

We are also now in communication with Ian via email.

Sarah and Alex

Lacoste L!VE collection.

Lacoste has recently introuced a new range inspired bu all-american sportswear, with there launch being held at the flagship storein Londons Newburgh street. Its aim to recast for the conempprary streets, targeting lacostes younger, more preppy demographic.

The brand teamed up with street art magazine 'Very nearly Almost' to create No Time Like The Present with LAcoste. IT features a print show exhibition, showcasing street srt, graffiti and illustration game together all under one roof. Lacoste and the magazine rounded up 13 respected artists to show there peices together, and guests will be greeted with this work suspended from rails attached to the ceiling, double facing and rotating in the air. There was also prizes to be won at the store such as £100 to be spent within the Lacoste L!IVE store.

Alex

TOMS shoes - How we wear them.

Toms website features a 'How we wear them' tab in which customers can upload picture of themselves wearing the toms shoes. This is a good way to create a buzz round the brand and also can incease sales.

Alex

Unconventional Chic - Lacoste Spring Summer Ad Campaign.

According to a recent article the mai objective for lacoste for this year is to 'rejuvinate the brand and regain new followers' and they beleive there new unconventional chic campaign will help wit this process. 

The message of the Campaign - 'some modern chic but shifted'. 


The new communication campaign is global and contains four visuals photographed in Paris. The campaign is set to be divided into Press, display, internet and ipad version. 


Alex

Blizzards 25th Birthday Bash - 'We invited the world'.

 One of the leading ice cream companies in America, Blizzard created a great buzz around the brand at there 25th birthday. The company had a blizzardmobile on a 25-city tour across america giving away free Blizzards at each stop, then introduced the digital outlet that they say 'connect people worldwide' - facebook. they added a tab to the fan page of the brand with different activities such as photo uploading, free blizzard sweepstakes and many more to include everyone in their birthday celebration. This resulted in the Dairy queen Blizard site visits jumped by 30% reaching 1,000,000 in one month alone. There facebook fan page also rose from 200,000 to 1.6 million in just under a year.

Alex

Forever 21 - Interactive Billboard.

The AMerican communications agency 'space150' recently designed an interactive billboard in New York time square for the fashionbrand Forever 21, which has recently been brought to the UK. The digital billboard features virtual models interactive with the crowd in a number of ways:
- a polaroid is taken of the street then shown by the model to the crowd
- an individual from te crowd is picked up and turned into a frog due to a kiss from the model
- other individuals from the crowd are put under virtual hats or in shopping bags to get them off screen. 

The technology for this to happen is very advanced; the computer even has the ability to pick out people from the crowd who are standing with 'forever 21' shopping bags, which means they are more likely to get picked by the virtual model. Other deatures of this project include 'love tweets' which are on-screen feed of twitter messages from fans that include the words forever 21 and love. This will definitely create a buzz around the brand and get people talking.

Alex 

 

Augmented Reality - Tag Heuer

Sarah