Advertisement
Canada markets closed
  • S&P/TSX

    22,167.03
    +59.95 (+0.27%)
     
  • S&P 500

    5,254.35
    +5.86 (+0.11%)
     
  • DOW

    39,807.37
    +47.29 (+0.12%)
     
  • CAD/USD

    0.7388
    +0.0015 (+0.21%)
     
  • CRUDE OIL

    83.11
    -0.06 (-0.07%)
     
  • Bitcoin CAD

    95,771.27
    +1,717.34 (+1.83%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • GOLD FUTURES

    2,254.80
    +16.40 (+0.73%)
     
  • RUSSELL 2000

    2,124.55
    +10.20 (+0.48%)
     
  • 10-Yr Bond

    4.2060
    +0.0100 (+0.24%)
     
  • NASDAQ futures

    18,465.00
    -38.75 (-0.21%)
     
  • VOLATILITY

    13.01
    +0.23 (+1.80%)
     
  • FTSE

    7,952.62
    +20.64 (+0.26%)
     
  • NIKKEI 225

    40,168.07
    -594.66 (-1.46%)
     
  • CAD/EUR

    0.6843
    +0.0038 (+0.56%)
     

Brands can lose popularity by becoming too popular

Designer Tommy Hilfiger poses with models before presenting his Fall/Winter 2015 collection at the New York Fashion Week February 16, 2015. Shunning the traditional catwalk, Mr. Hilfiger instead presented his collection on a mock American Football field. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly (UNITED STATES - Tags: FASHION ENTERTAINMENT) (REUTERS)

Groucho Marx is reported to have said, "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member." Sometimes, high-end designer brands can suffer a similar fate.

Tommy Hilfiger was launched in 1985, offering classic preppy styles in bright nautical colours. The designs stood out as fresh and different, which ironically attracted a huge number of customers who all wanted to look different.

By the early 1990s, it seemed almost everyone was wearing Tommy — including hip-hop and R&B artists, who the company actively courted in commercials like this one featuring Aaliyah.

- Watch the video

ADVERTISEMENT

Enjoying all the new revenue and eager not to disappoint shareholders, the company kept producing more product and selling it to more people.

Eventually, Tommy Hilfiger became just too common and was abandoned by its preppy base and musicians. In fact, in one three-month period in 2000, the company's stock plunged 75 per cent.

Thomas Burberry introduced his upscale, un-tearable, weatherproof fabric in 1856. By the 1960s, the company's distinctive check lining had become a status symbol.

In the above ad from 1991, the brand's heritage and class-consciousness were still evident as a son in a Burberry raincoat stopped by in his Range Rover to visit his elderly mother.

As mainstream Britons started buying Burberry to help them feel upper-class, the company envisioned huge new profits and started putting its check on trendier, more commonplace items like caps.

The turning point was when label-conscious football hooligans adopted the check in the early 2000s. So much violence was committed by thugs in Burberry that the brand was eventually banned from some pubs.

Upscale U.K. customers immediately jumped ship, and the company was only saved by international sales.

Therein lies the paradox of high-end, designer brands — much of their appeal is exclusivity, but if they become too successful in marketing their exclusivity, sales increase, they're no longer exclusive and core customers stop buying.

In a classic cinematic commercial for Stella Artois, we see a Belgian patriarch on his deathbed. His final wish is just what you might expect in a beer commercial.

You'd think that long, subtle, foreign-language commercials would be enough to keep a brand exclusive. But the quirkiness of the ads, combined with the beer's higher alcohol content, gave Stella a huge following, which the brand encouraged further by allowing steep discounting.

As a result, by the mid-2000s in the U.K., Stella had become known as "the wife-beater beer" due to its popularity among drunken, violent young men. This led to beer connoisseurs dropping the brand and many pubs delisting it.

Fortunately, Tommy Hilfiger, Burberry and Stella Artois are all currently in recovery mode, having finally recognized the importance of staying focussed on their core customer base and learning that brands have to be carefully managed, not simply milked for profits.

Bruce Chambers is a syndicated advertising columnist for CBC Radio.