marketing Chanel essay

I'm just posting an essay that I did for my Cinema and Media Studies seminar. I am quite pleased with it and I got a 2.1 in it so I'm just putting it out there, then again most of what I'm saying is just speculation, it's just my opinion. 

Marketing Chanel and the changing demographic

The origins of the Chanel date back as far as 1909 when Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel opened a shop on the ground floor of the apartment of the popular Parisian socialite and heir Étienne Balsan. Both Chanel the woman and Chanel the brand were initially devoted entirely to their consumer. Coco Chanel, who handled all the publicity of her label on her own, aimed to provide the women of Paris with what they did not even realise they needed yet (Morand. 98). In this essay I intend to outline how the Chanel S.A, which consists of Chanel, Eres and seven other ateliers and is privately owned by the Werthheimer family, has embraced the internet into their consumer tactics through advertising, blogs and online shops, allowing its market strategies to be categorised as “participatory” by yet again providing the public, or more specifically the younger consumer, with produce that they did not even reaslise they “needed”. Although Chanel is not a media organisation, advertising has played a huge role in the history of Chanel and it is this aspect that I wish to focus on – how has Chanel S.A’s advertising changed in recent years to become participatory?

Entering 2010s, Chanel has appeared to have come full circle. Although it still remains an exclusive and luxury brand, it has once again bowed not only to the buyer but also to the people who only dream of buying it. As Kretz and de Valck note, a blogger can establish what the overall message of their blog is about by “intentionally inserting readily recognisable visual or textual brands on the blog page” (318). The example that Belk uses in fact is the Chanel 2.55 bag, a bag so visually recognisble that even if the logo is not visible it is still instantly recognisable, much like the shape of a Ferrari or the costume of a comic book hero. It may not be recognisable to everybody but it is to the person that the brand sees as a potential consumer. Not every blogger who creates a post on a Chanel bag is a consumer of that Chanel bag, in the same way that not every blogger who creates a post about a luxury car owns a luxury car. Blogging is however essentially free advertising for brand. One of the greatest examples of this is the relationship between the fashion blog seaofshoes.com and the house of Chanel. As director Margy Kinmonth clearly showed, the process of production of haute couture has always been shrouded in secrecy (The Secret World of Haute Couture. 2007), however when Karl Lagerfeld, creative director of Chanel invited Jane Aldrige of seaofshoes.com to be his guest of honour at the Crillon Ball in Paris this assumption was turned on its head. The then-17-year-old was flown to Paris and invited into Chanel’s Rue De Cambon studio to be fitted for a couture gown. She became the first fashion blogger to have this kind of experience, cementing the role of the fashion blogger in the creative process of a brand. So what was the motivation behind Lagerfeld’s, or rather the advertising department of Chanel, sudden recruitment of a 17-year-old girl, something that Chanel S.A’s competitors LVMH, Prada and Gucci Group had refused to do?

While not all of Jane’s readers can indulge in couture gowns, the majority of fashion labels also try to cater to the smaller bugdet and younger demographic and the consumer of this produce is at whom the advertising in the fashion blogsphere is aimed. While Jane writes blogs about her Chanel gown (seaofshoes.com/2009/12/31-rue-cambon.html), the fifteen year old across the country may decide that for her birthday she wants a bottle of Chanel perfume (RRP €78+*) or a pair of Chanel sunglasses (RRP €115+*).

            The majority of the Chanel advertising budget is spent on perfume and accessories. Since the early 1990s, Chanel has been desperately trying to engage with a younger market (Kane. nytimes.com. 2002). Since Chanel is independent from conglomerates like LVMH and Gucci Group, it controls its own advertising. While LVMH have Marc by Marc Jacobs to accommodate the under 25 generation, Chanel had to adapt in order to bring in a younger generation of consumer. As Kane notes the under 25 demographic has proved to be the hardest for Chanel to penetrate. Perfumes were launched that were aimed at a younger demographic than the orginal 40+ generation to whom Chanel perfumes initially appealed. With the evolution of Internet blogger, Chanel embraced the possibility of free marketing and advertising to the younger generation. Thus Chanel allowed its interlocked CC logo to be used freely on t-shirts that would not jepordise the values of the brand but instead would make it known and “cooler” to the younger generation. Tshirts bearing the slogans ‘Who the fk is Chanel?’ and the dripping interlocked C’s began to be sold on sites such as Etsy.com without the fear of a counterfiet related lawsuit. Without any dent in their advertsing budget, Chanel is receiving free advertising en masse to the younger consumer. It must however be carefully noted though that this is not the same as the huge market for fake or counterfeit handbags and designer produce (Welters and Lillethun. 610). Along with the exposure though the Etsy.com, the likes of Jane Alridge from seaofshoes.com firmly put Chanel on the radar of the younger consumer.

Taking this all into account, it is simple to conclude that the media power behind Chanel Eres has encouraged participation from the consumer through embracing the fashion blogsphere and engaging with the younger market.

*Prices correct of Brown Thomas, ie.strawberrynet.com and chanel.com – 2011

Biblography

Blaszczyk, Regina Lee. Producing Fashion: Commerce, Culture, and Consumers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2008.

Darlington, Marguerite. "Mid-Tier to Luxury Fashion Brands Open Their Doors to Licensing." Http://fashionablymarketing.me. 16 Oct. 2011. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.

Kane, Courtney. "Chanel Makes a Big Pitch for a New Perfume Aimed at Young Women, Its Toughest Market." The New York Times - www.nytimes.com. 15 Aug. 2002. Web. 16 Oct. 2011.

Kinmonth, Margy, dir. The Secret World of Haute Couture. Prod. Tracy Jeune and Margy Kinmonth. BBC Four. London, Mar. 2007. Television.

Kretz, Gachoucha, and Kristine de Valck. ""Pixilize Me!": Digital Storytelling and the Creation of Archetypal Myths Through Explicit and Implicit Self-Brand Association in Fashion and Luxury Blogs." Research in Consumer Behavior. Ed. Russell W. Belk. 12th ed. Greenwich, CT: JAI, 2010. 313-29.

Moore, Sarah. "27. Fashion Blogs." The Fashion Reader. By Linda Welters and Abby Lillethun. 2nd ed. Oxford: Berg, 2011.

Morand, Paul. The Allure of Chanel. Trans. Euan Cameron. London: Pushkin, 2008.

Sheridan, Jayne. Fashion, Media, Promotion: the New Black Magic. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.

Wang, Kitty. "Testing Firms’ Strategic Interactions in Advertising: Evidence in the Fashion Industry." Diss. University of Toronto, 2011. Http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca, 1 July 2011. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.

Welters, Linda, and Abby Lillethun. The Fashion Reader. 2nd ed. Oxford: Berg, 2011.

Cheers for reading,

Jane