Creative Brief - Urban Outiffters

In 1976, Urban Outfitters a soon to be worldwide apparel company was founded by two Philadelphians, Scott Hayne and Scott Belair - the company, originated as ''The Free Peoples Store' offers a variety of  compelling and distinct household and clothing merchandise to a niche market and aims to establish, understand and connect with customers on an emotional level. The store, which operate is the US, UK, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands and Sweden primarily consists of clothing, footwear and houseware which largely draw from bohemian, hipster, ironically humorous, kitschy, retro and vintage styles. Much of their products have a very counter-culture, hip, earthy and unconventional style which is what makes it so unique and popular.

UO's mission statement: "Lifestyle merchandising is our business and our passion, The goal for our brands is to build a strong emotional bond with the customer. To do this we must build lifestyle environment that appeal emotionally, and offer correct products on a timely basis. Our customers are the reason and the inspiration for everything we do"

UO's philosophy is: "Our established ability to understand out customers and connect with them on a emotional level is the reason for our success . The reason for this success is that out brands are both compelling and distinct...Our goal is to offer a product assortment and an environment so compelling and distinctive that the customer feels an empathetic  connection to the brand and is persuaded to buy"

In addition to this they say each brand they have, whether this being UO, Anthropologie, Free People, Terrain and BHLDN choose a particular customer segment and once chosen sets out to create sustainable points of distinction.

The company design retail brands with innovative stores that resonate with the target audience: offering an eclectic mix of merchandise in which hard and soft goods are cross merchandised; and construct unique product displays that incorporate found objects into creative selling vignettes. There emphasis is on creativity. And there goal is to offer a product assortment and an environment so compelling and distinctive that the customer feels an empathetic connection to the brand and is persuaded to buy.

Urban Outfitters is a publicly traded company owned and chaired by Robert Hayne. He hold the greatest amount of shares in the company at 27.85 million shares. The company is also held by several large investors such as Fidelity Management & Research Company, Maverick Capital Ltd, Vanguard Group and Capital Guardian Trust Company.


Consumer Base:

- Urban Outfitters aims to serve a 18 to 30 year old target market (though appeal to those of a younger age)
- Products for both men and women
- Market generally includes single, affluent people who live in cities with a funky and unique sense of style.
- Defined as "metropolitan hipsters"
- Creative, independent, and tech-savvy

Product Controversies

Urban Outfitters products have been the subject of multiple controversies, particularly concerning religious, ethical and ethnic issues. Over the years, UO, the store aimed at young hipsters has also managed to offend different races, jews, Native Americans, Liberals, conservatives and eating-disorder awareness groups, among others. Many of the offensive designs have been sold through apparell but misc/household items have also had there fair share of controversy for example:

It began in 2003 when the company released a Monopoly parody called Ghettopoly. The game was criticized as racist and quite rightly so - the board game labeled people living in a disadvantaged neighborhoods as 'whores' 'drug addicts' or who would steal properties and cars. 'you got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $5' was just one of the many slogans of the game that caused such uproar. Despite this David Chang, the creator of the game maintained that the games are "a medium to bring together in laughter" adding "if we cant laugh at ourselves...we'll continue to live in blame and bitterness''

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In 2010, Urban Outfitters released a t-shirt with the words “Eat Less” written across it. The store was heavily attacked for promoting anorexia and encouraging young girls to satisfy a specific body image. Back in 2010, this t-shirt created a controversial uproar. Actress Sophia Bush started a world- wide boycott against the store. Since then, the t-shirt has made history all over the internet. As well as this, in 2010, Urban Outfitters designed a t-shirt which came in an “Obama/ Black” color option. Using Obama’s name to describe the color of a black t-shirt offended many. In response to several complaints, Urban Outfitters said they "screwed up, and are sincerely sorry," explaining that they had internally developed a color called "Obama Blue" that accidentally appeared on the website.

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More recently, in 2014 Urban Outfitters was charged with exploring 'the outer reaches of bad taste' after selling what seemed to be a faux blood-spattered "Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt" for $129. The sweatshirt was widely interpreted as a reference to 1970's Kent State massacre, in which four unarmed students were shot and killed by the Ohio National Guard during a Vietnam War protest - the sweatshirt also included what looked like bullet holes patters invoking the Kent State Shooting. As part of Urban Outfitters' "Vintage Finds," only a single sweatshirt was available; shortly after BuzzFeed wrote about the sweatshirt, someone purchased it and listed it on eBay for $550, with a $2,500 Buy It Now price. Urban Outfitters was heavily critisied by media and social media for the release of the vintage sweatshirt.

Urban Outfitters issued a statement: "It was never our intention to allude to the tragic events that took place at Kent State in 1970 and we are extremely saddened that this item was perceived as such … There is no blood on this shirt nor has this item been altered in any way. The red stains are discoloration from the original shade of the shirt and the holes are from natural wear and fray."

 Kent State issued the following statement: "May 4, 1970, was a watershed moment for the country and especially the Kent State family. We lost four students that day while nine others were wounded and countless others were changed forever. We take great offense to a company using our pain for their publicity and profit. This item is beyond poor taste and trivializes a loss of life that still hurts the Kent State community today. 

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Urban Outfitters have also had a lot of backlash from designers and jewelerry makers outside of Urban Outfitters. In May 2011, Stephanie "Stevie" Koerner, a designer who owns an online store on Etsy, claimed that Urban Outfitters' "I Heart Destination" necklaces were stolen from her "United World Of Love", which both featured metal chain necklaces of various states with heart shaped holes punched in. Blogger April Winchell investigated and discovered that the necklaces featured a common design which a number of other artists, both on and outside of Etsy, had been selling for at least a year prior to Koerner's first sale. Additionally, Winchell drew attention to a commenter's discovery of another instance in which Koerner had claimed credit for a design that was not originally hers. Nevertheless, Urban Outfitters removed the product from their online store.

After similar shirts came out branding anorexia, depression the media started to catch on, in January of 2014 The Guardian published the online article 'Don't shop at Urban Outfitters. their 'Depression' shirt is latest controversy.' The article written by Jessica Wakeman heavily discusses the matter at hand saying that 'once a year or more, a fresh outrage erupts on the internet after one of their (urban outfitters) products is deemed offensive'. The article then goes onto discuss the fact that Urban Outfitters only sold the piece of clothing with depression on it with the brand name emblazoned all over it. The article pushes across that Urban Outfitter could make a 'week argument' about how they were trying to raise awareness about mental health when really they just wanted the publicity.

Urban Outfitters has now been faced with a 15% down fall is shares. The retailer revealed that sales at its namesake brand are continuing to plunge. The companies third-quarter earnings could be negatively affected by disappointing sales, UO said in a news release that sales fell 10% in the last quarter alone. The brand is facing big issues but PRc companies have looked out their issues and how UO can begin to improve for example  - 

Urban Outfitters need to sell hip, trendy apparel in order to bring in customers. But Urban Outfitters latest offering have been more obscure than hip - bizarre apparell has been sold from time to time for prices beyond reasonable. It has also been said that Urbans fitness brand created in the response to the popularity of existing brand was criticized for being overpriced and skimpy. 

In addition to this, Urban Outfitters markets to teen customers. Unfortunately, those customers are price-conscious and would rather shop at fast-fashion brands like River Island and H&M.In order to turn business around, Urban Outfitters will have to resonate with older customers who are in college and beyond. Urban Outfitters CEO Richard Hayne said that the brand plans to improve store displays and advertisements. 

After the controversial tshirts sold in the past decade, Hayne said that the brand is working to fix fashion assortment and get customers back in stores. 

Tools and Techniques of a Marketing Campaign.

Firstly, what is Marketing?...Marketing is a process that focuses on the wants and needs including market research and advertising, by doing this it enables products to be delivered that satisfy the customers.

Marketing Campaign: Specific activities designed to promote, service or business. A marketing campaign includes a series of steps that include promotion of a product through different mediums. A marketing medium could combine:-

• Print Media 
• Email
• Radio 
• Television 
• Search Engines
• Social Media
• Events
• Outdoor Media
• Publicity
• Direct Mail

...A Viral Campaign.  Viral marketing campaigns are an amazing way to generate a huge amount of buss and brand awareness around a product, film, subject etc, these can be carried out online or offline. Below is an example of a Viral Campaign:-

Dove real Beauty Sketches

The goal of Dove's real Beauty Sketches is to ignite global conversation about the definition of beauty. Dove launched the campaign with a three-minute YouTube film about how women view themselves, Moving and poignant the video received 163 million global views and won the Titanium Grand Prix at the International Festival of Creativity.

The goal of the campaign was to build a brand love and loyalty and turn beauty into a source of confidence, not anxiety for woman. 

The Approach:  

- Produce a three minute video, Dove real Beauty Sketches which was uploaded in 25 languages to 46 Dove YouTube channels 

-Launched video globally with the support of TrueView in-stream, TrueView in-search, YouTube homepage masthead and search ads
-Encouraged audience participation through YouTube brand channels, YouTube video responses, Google plus Hangouts, and a Google plus page.

Dove believes in celebrating beauty in its diversity and, in doing so, raising the self-esteem of women and young girls globally. Featuring real women in advertising has been an integral part of the Dove brand’s DNA—dating back to the introduction of the Dove Beauty Bar in 1957. 

Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004 based on the findings of a major global study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report. The brand ignited a global conversation about the need for a wider definition of beauty after the study proved the hypothesis that the definition of beauty had become limiting and unattainable. The way women see themselves is dramatically different from how others perceive them. Only 4% of women globally consider themselves beautiful and 54% agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic. In 2013, Dove conducted a compelling social experiment to bring this to life. Documented in a short film, Dove Real Beauty Sketches explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see.

The film, created by Ogilvy & Mather Brazil, features an FBI-trained sketch artist drawing a woman’s portrait according to her own self-description. He then sketches a portrait of the same woman according to a stranger’s description of her. Throughout, the artist never lays eyes on the women themselves, and neither the artist nor women know about the social experiment.

Dove Real Beauty Sketches struck an emotional chord with millions of women who recognize that when it comes to how they look, the biggest beauty pressure is the pressure they put on themselves.

The results:
- The most watched online ad ever, according to Unilever, with over 163 million views globally
-4.6 billion media impressions; reached 275,000 followers on Google+
-#1 on the Cannes YouTube Ads Leaderboard and won Titanium Grand Prix at 2013 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity

What is involved in a marketing campaign? (tools and techniques)

Marketing Strategy Process 

• Understanding the customer - to create a working market the business need to understand what the customer wants, to do this data needs to be collected. This could be through surveys, advertisements, social media etc. The data can be collected to create a products that can be marketed too attract the right target audience. 
• Analyse the market/data - Without analysing the information from the audience the product cannot fully reach its potential. Analysing allows the company to reach out to specific customers in the right way. 
• Analyse the competition - When creating a product a company needs to be aware of existing markets. There is no point in creating a product that is already out there. The previous steps of marketing strategy processes will help the company in creating a product that will be individual and unique to the rest of the market. 
• Research Distribution Channels - this basically means which way would be the best way to deliver the product through marketing mediums. 
• Defining your market mix - narrowing down you product price, place and ways of promotion so that the company reaches out to the audience in the best way possible to get noticed. With pricing, the company also has to take into consideration that possibly in a few years time when newer products have come out, making competition, the pricing needs to be right so that are creating the right sales.
• Analysing the financials - Creating a marketing budget so the company does not over spend and lose money
• Review and revise - one of the most important things to do is evaluate the effectiveness of the marketing, therefore being able to improve in the future

- Marketing Campaigns can be designed with different ends in mind, building a brand, building a new product, increasing sales of a product increasing sales of a product already on the market, or even reducing the impact of negative news. For example the Dove real Beauty Sketches Viral Campaign.


The Nine Functions of Marketing

• Product Service Management - assisting in the design and development of products and services that will meet the needs of prospective customers.
• Marketing Information Management - Obtaining, managing and using market information to improve decision making and the performance of marketing activities
• Financing - Budgeting for marketing activities, obtaining necessary financing and providing financial assistance
• Purchasing - the planning and procedures necessary to obtain goods and services for use in the operation of the business or for resale.
•  Pricing - establishing and communicating the value of products and services to prospective customers
• Distribution - determining the best methods and procedures to be used so prospective customers are able to locate, obtain and use the products and services of an organization.
• Promotion - communicating information to the prospective customers through advertising and other promotional methods to encourage them to purchase the organizations products and services
• Selling - direct, personal communications with prospective customers in order to assess needs and satisfy those needs with appropriate products and services. 
• risk Management -  the planning controlling, preventing and procedures used to limit business losses. 

Four Utilities of Marketing

There are four types of utilities:- Form, place, possession and time

• Form - e.g potatoes processed into chips
• Place -  modern day transport makes this possible 
• Possession - legal ownership of a product 
• Time - 'right place at the right time', keeping customers means having product available when they want e.g ingredients/components are available. 

Marketing cant be possible unless all these are in place.

What is PR?... Public relations (PR) is the practice of managing the spread of information between an individual or organisation and the public this may include an organisation or individual gain exposure to their audiences using topics of public interest and news items that do not require payment. A PR company is there to persuade the public into a certain thing or product such as moving home or drinking a certain drink, its all about changing the behaviour of the audience.  Public relations is all about 'persuading the people' and reputation, if you work in PR its all about what you do, what you say and what others say about you. Public relations is usually controlled through media (creative control) and its all about making the public believe in the company your representing. One way PR can gain a good image for the company is through celebrity endorsement. Well known celebrities can have a lot of influence on the public and many people aspire to be like them or dress like them. An example of this is if a well known celebrity was seen wearing a Prada bag given to them by Prada's PR company they would wear it, advertise it on Instagram or be seen wearing it in a magazine this gives free advertising through them for Prada and gives a good reputation toward them.

So how does public relations differ from advertising? With PR, a company does not pay the newspapers and TV channels for media exposures it secures. PR achieves such a competitive advantage by for example opening a new market, attracting high calibre employees, giving more access to funding and investors, creating high value for products and services and protecting businesses in times of crisis. All organisation, big or small benefit from public relations.

Public relations influences the public through reviews, the PR company will work with people to get review on there product so if the public give bad reviews the PR company will have to deal with the situation in a certain way that will gain the company popularity again. In a PR crisis, communication is key to managing it. The company must face up to the situation in order to restore reputation. The simplest method is to tell the companies side of the story through a statement and make sure the head of business is available to talk to press and others about what went wrong and what is being done to resolve it. Putting in place procedures for handling customer complaints so that a small problem doesn't escalate can reduce the chances go getting bad press. Essentially after a company receives bad publicity they will need to produce positive PR. This means to emphasise positive stories, this can be by improving practices and community involvement e.g encouraging staff to volunteer or support a charity, and simply to keep the customers satisfied and carry on with the business in the most positive way.

An good example of bad PR was in 2003, where popular clothing shop Urban Outfitters sold a racist board game. The board game 'Ghettopoly' labeled people living in a disadvantaged neighborhood as 'whores' 'drug addicts' or who would steal properties and cars. 'you got yo whole neighborhood addicted to crack. Collect $5' was just one of the many slogans of the game that caused such uproar. A huge and world wide known disaster for Pry was the BP Deepwater Horizon accident in 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, the accident resulted in 11 deaths and extensive environmental damage. BP shares fell by 2 percent immediately following the incident and more than halved throughout the remainder of 2010. BP was faced with the huge challenge of attempting to get consumers to trus the brand again. BP launched an investigation into the accident and carried out extensive checks to ensure safety at its other sites which together with its support of events like the Olympics helped repair its profile - by the end of 2011 BP share price had gone from the fall of just 302.95p to 460.50p and the company was ranked 18th in the consumer Superband list in 2013

 Lastly, a further bad example of an Pr disaster was a KFC Chicken coupon scandal in America 2009. The popular fast-food restaurant teamed up with well-known and influential talk show host Oprah, who promoted a coupon for a free KFC new grilled chicken, due to this KFC restaurants nation-wide were swamped with customers demanding their complimentary chicken, Many restaurants weren't prepared to meet the demands and hundreds of people walked away without the free chicken. KFC later tried to resolve the issue by mailing out rainchecks to there disgruntled customers to pay back for the complaints.

How has marketing strategy/technique evolved over the past 10 years?


Thee have been man contributing factors that have revolutionized marketing over the past 10 years. With the growing surge of social networking sites, smartphones that are multi-functional and gadgets the fact of marketing has drastically changed over the past decade.  It is become almost essential for companies to follow the latest marketing trends to not only get new customers but also to maintain existing ones. Technological advancement has become something of a asset for consumers and given them a sense of empowerment - product information is available at a click of a finger and there are more competitors than ever in the market. If internet and technology has benefited the consumers, it has also created new media for marketing.

The most obvious but in fact biggest contributor to the new media marketing is the Internet. The internet has drastically changed the face of trade and commerce in the past decade being able to buy almost everything online. It is not surprising that its been responsible for the revolutionary ways of advertising and marketing. More companies have stretched these functions to the virtual world to influence consumer presence in their favour. They are attempting to build a strong network that allows them to get closer to their clients - while online advertising began in the form of a banner ad on a website, it has now taken forms of:  social networking websites - e.g company Twitter accounts/Facebook profiles; viral videos; blogging; promotional campaigns; forums; pop-ups. Marketers have to keep  on top of everything within the changing trends in consumer needs and tastes, this is were Internet also comes in handy, proving to be a reliable source for gathering data through surveys, polls and interaction through social media. Thanks to the Internet, it is now possible for the marketing to facilitate instant sales through the option of mail order shopping, instant access to product information and subsequently acceleration in the time taken to make a sale.

Another leading factor how marketing has evolved it the contribution of Apps. Apps can now be downloaded on almost any smartphone and be used for anything.

Marketing before the creation of the world wine web is now considered traditional. Marketing strategies before used to be direct sales, TV, radio, mail, print advertising (magazines, coupon books, billboards etc) and printed promotional materials like catalogs or brochures. Traditional methods may be the only means of reaching a particular group of consumers. For instance, if you are interested in targeting retiring CEO's much of this demographic isn't utilising the internet or social media.

Internet Marketing Statistics [HubSpot.com]:-

• Twitter has assisted 42 percent companies present on its portal to bring a new customer.
• 66 percent marketers rank blogs as in important source of increasing online traffic to company website. 
• 57 percent company blogs are credited for acquiring new customers 
• 51 percent fans of a company's Facebook page will make a purchase
• 79 percent followers of a company's Twitter account will recommend its products to others

In the start of the millennium, e-mail marketing was the amateur. Today, it is an essential part of nearly every marketers price on application, In the field of marketing, it initially gained recognition as a means to reach many customers through a single source of communication. Now, it is the medium of marketing that is used to send personalized messages to different target groups broken down into smaller sizes.

Marketing is the medium of stimulating sales in the future and subsequently, it's one of the most important functions of the management of a company. In the present consumer-driven market, companies cannot afford to let their competition have access to any window of opportunity to take the lead. Marketing is the solution to that.

Pinterest Board - Q5

http://www.pinterest.com/eleanor1406/marketing-in-the-21st-century/

What is more important, the product or the marketing?...

Without marketing a product could almost me considered non existent. Most aspects of a business depends on successful marketing, the marketing covers advertising, public relations, promotions and sales. Without marketing, your business may offer the best products or services in your industry, but none of your potential customers would know about it. Without marketing sales may crash and companies may have to close.

There are a number of different aspects to marketing that make it significantly more important than the product its self. Firstly marketing can boost higher sales, once a product, service or company gets on the radar screen of its prospects, it increases your chances that consumers will make a purchase. As your product becomes more well known it will come to a point where new customers will spread the word, telling family and friends about a new product they've discovered. Without employing marketing strategies, these sales may not have ever happened; without sales, a company cannot succeed.

The success of a company often rests on a solid reputation. If you do marketing right, it can build a brand name recognition or product recall with a company. When a company reaches the high expectations of the public, its reputation stands on a firmer ground. As the reputation grows, the business expands and sales increase.

Despite this, marketing is hugely important for a business to succeed, it can also be very expensive. 'After the first year, a marketing budget can reach as much at 30 percent (sometimes more) of the annual sales' A marketing program that gives your company the best chance is a healthy mix of different forms of marketing, such  as website development , public relations, print and broadcast advertising, design and printing material, trade shows and other special events.