II – Translation of the Danish Text “Diesel – det river I næsen”
Actually, Renzo Rosso was to be a farmer, but then he went to a cutter course and created his own clothing company. Today it is a world-wide life style factory and – to many – a provocation.
The result is one of Italy’s most rapidly growing companies that provide especially the youth, but also small children and the slightly older generation, with clothes. Leisurewear, mind you. The latest craze from Molvena is incidentally perfume on old-fashioned milk bottles and toilet soap wrapped up as if it was butter.
“We now ascertain that also the taste is globalized. Young people no longer have a Danish or an Italian culture, but a common culture. They want the easy and the quick, and we are gladly heading for them. We can no longer do like we did 10 or 20 years ago.”
III – Report on the Development on the Jeans Market
To: The Management
From: Heidi Hansen, Chief of Marketing
Date: 18 December 2003
Subject: Development on the Jeans Market
During the last few years we have lost much market share, and our turnover is continuously reducing into the bargain. Regrettably, times have now changed and lots of small newcomers have highly taken us by surprise, which means that we are no longer the leading company on the jeans market. Therefore, we have to struggle our way back to the top using new marketing strategies, caused the fact that we have not been able to retain the loyalty of our target group, which undoubtedly is one of the issues a company should be best at handling. Of course it is easy to be wise after the event, but we must be optimistic if we will succeed in this project.
A reason why we have lost our dominant position is that the jeans market has changed rapidly, because of the fact that the new so-called Generation Y, which is a huge part of our target group, is a lot different from the previous Generation X. The new generation consists of children and youngsters between five and twenty years, and they have grown up with a whole new technology as well as completely different family patterns. It is also a fact that this generation is more racially diverse, and that it is constantly being overwhelmed by commercials, which all together are important facts that influence young people making decisions on what to buy.
As we all memorize, demographics caught up with the jeans industry in the early 1980s, and that was probably because of the aging baby boomers which as you know were our great target group. All at once, their taste changed along with their age, and the segment of young people most likely to buy jeans, was shrinking. Subsequently, we sought growth
through mass-marketing strategies, substantially increased our advertising and sold through mass retailers, but when we realized that these things did not solve any problem, we tried
with diversification into faster-growing fashion. When we afterwards made an effort on diversification into specialty apparel businesses, profits collapsed, so we are that much wiser now, seeing that slapping our famous name on everything is not a useful solution when we cannot sell our jeans in sufficient quantities. We must keep doing what we are best at; making and selling jeans.
Furthermore, it is a fact that we experienced this great turnaround in 1985, because of our aggressive and innovative global marketing efforts. We were competent of picking ourselves up by finding new ways of growing profitably in spite of the decline in the domestic jeans market, and by looking at facts then and now, I have noticed a relation that tells me it is the same thing Levi’s is experiencing these days. Our target group is changing and how do we attract the attention of these consumers?
The world is being more and more globalized, in which the Internet takes a great part. Many young people make use of the Internet every day, and it is a truth that shopping on the Internet is being ever more popular, which is why I propose an ameliorated marketing effort for the future. To begin with, I am proud of the website www.levis.com, and since you can already buy Levi’s products online as well as read about the very company, nothing particularly needs to be ameliorated there. However, we must make a better effort to advertise our company in the way that our target group is always being reminded of our products, just like we spent a huge amount on the 501 blues campaign in the late 1980s. With that I do not mean that we only have to improve our marketing on the Internet, but also in the traditional media, where I suggest that we make a campaign never to forget by using lots of humour and irony. This we can do on television while we have a parallel campaign going on elsewhere kind of to support the major campaign.
Additionally, time has brought a tremendously trendy way of marketing, and that is by using direct communication, signifying that the best way of reaching youngsters is to be
where they are, behave like they do, and last of all think like they do. For instance a new trend composing of sending out street teams is incredibly popular, because you in that way
show people that you really want to make an effort to catch their attention, and at the same time, these street teams are very entertaining.
Moreover, youngsters of the new generation want to look individual having their own style and therefore, we cannot keep manufacturing plain blue jeans; what young people want are more than one type of jeans. That means that we have got to focus on tailoring the products and campaigns to each individual person and each individual region, where to we can hire people to do PR in every single country. If we do that, they can be responsible for publicity and arranging events. I believe that we are able to go far with this project, and our main objective would be to sell different collections to different types of youngsters, including expand the collections little by little.
Thus, we are obliged to look more forward and gain knowledge of the persons to whom we want to sell our products, and for that reason we must learn to think like them. We have to realize that our heydays are over, and that we have to work our way to the top all over again, simultaneously, while we are required to be attentive in potential changes of young people’s habits. If we are able to handle the situation that we are in the middle of now, we are strong enough to handle almost everything, and that is why we must do every possible thing to accomplish our goals for the future, because we need to succeed now more than ever.
Heidi Hansen
Chief of Marketing
