Localspeak

Tommy Hilfiger “Par-tay” Rocks Spanish Social Sentiment

13 January 2012

Fans of Tommy Hilfiger in the Spanish market now are straddling between the brand’s renowned “preppy” look and its new sexy rock styles as the brand continues its aggressive global expansion.

Last year was marked by Hilfiger’s new European marketing campaign that included a novel retail phenomenon, especially in Spain—the Pop-up store, which was used as a platform to launch the brand’s Summer Prep World collection in Madrid’s Parque Aranco.

Supported by a strategic social marketing effort, the campaign launch featured significant pre-opening Hilfiger posts and videos, as well as a concurrent new design contest that showcased at the opening of the pop-up store in Madrid.

With the recent release of NetBase for Spanish and German (soon to be followed by other European languages and we anticipate within a year Japanese, as well), sophisticated social analytics has risen to another level. Using Netbase, Localspeak turned its attention to Hilfiger’s uniquely American fashion brand to discover how the new global marketing approach has been playing to Spaniards and other Latino consumers, exploring social insights and analytics for brands outside the English-speaking world.

According to many brand passionista Madrileños, Hilfiger combines a uniquely American brand of prep with a touch of elegance, reflecting its move from a more adolescent market to young adults, adults and even a new and somewhat masculine women’s line.

Se trata de básicos “preppy” actualizados con ingeniosos detalles que irradian la inimitable elegancia de Tommy Hilfiger. Source

Translation: It’s about marrying the basic “preppy” with sophisticated detailing to reflect Tommy Hilfiger’s unique elegance.

Hilfiger’s more edgy chic rocker ensembles also appear to be catching fire among Spaniards and other Latins. This post associates the “look” with the bad boy caught-in-the-assassins’-crosshairs-Taylor Lautner-look in Abduction :

… Para rematar el look de chico malo, intenta con una chaqueta de motociclista en cuero…. Manteniendote Genial .Hay algo en esa chaqueta abierta que a todos nos gusta. Source

Translation: To create a bad chic look, [Hilfiger] adds a leather motorcycle jacket… Fancy that. There’s something about this open jacket that we all like.

Founded in Elmira, New York with Hilfiger’s original store The People’s Place, the Hilfiger brand, now owned by Phillips-van Heusen (who also owns Calvin Klein), began to invest in a wildly successful marketing and media campaign in Spain, Germany and other European countries in 2011, coinciding with the brand’s U.S. media campaigns. Our Spanish theme mapping below is rendered from an NLP analyzed archive of contextually processed Spanish sound bites using highly advanced computational linguistics.

Spaniards loved the distinctly non-traditional, arguably irreverent yet irrepressibly stylish retro-mod fictitious Hilfiger family depicted in the Christmas House Par-tay campaign. Modish Miami flash marketing featuring Lady Gaga also charmed Spanish and Latin aesthetic sensibility. And marketing for Loud, the brand’s new young adult fragrance, featured music by Ting Tings that captivated Spanish and Latino youth.

… como la “Loud” de Tommy Hilfiger con The Ting Tings toy q me compro el perfume solo por la propaganda. Source

Translation: Like Tommy Hilfiger’s Loud with Thing Things, so I bought the perfume only because of the ad.

Brand personality generated substantial discussion, with Spanish consumers clearly identifying with an indelible and appealing character infused in the Hilfiger brand, as well as extensions that include the Tommy Girl fragrance, ostensibly created with a sustainable mission.

… Como curiosidad dentro de Tommy Hilfiger, diré que la marca tiene costumbre de usar ingredientes autóctonos de los EE.En este caso en concreto los ingredientes son la piña de Hawaii, el cactus de Arizona o las maderas de Wyoming o Vermont.Me hizo gracia que también se incluyera la lluvia de Seattle, no sé que tendrá de particular con otras lluvias. Source

Translation: … Standing out at Tommy Hilfiger, I can say that the brand typically uses native U.S. ingredients. In this instance, Hawaiian pineapple is combined with Arizona cactus or Wyoming or Vermont wood. Wouldn’t it be funny if he also added Seattle rain. I don’t know if there are any other special rains.

Other NetBase analytics capabilities facilitate a deeper dive into forums and micro blogs, with consumer voices helping to reveal new and/or unanticipated brand insights. For example, we were able to explore conversations by language among a distribution of domains.

These Spanish and German domain distribution charts show how NetBase can play a pivotol role in helping to inform a media buyer’s ad spend. It can even inspire brand manager or creative director marketing upon reviewing consumer conversations about your brand. CMO s, too, may discover new strategic marketing channels.

In contrast to the distribution of NLP analyzed social media posts among Spanish domains, German posts revealed a mere fraction of the Spanish Facebook activity and approximately two-thirds as many Twitter posts. The remaining traffic in both German and Spanish shows up on fashion forums focused on consumer reviews of the Hilfiger brand.

Corporate communications and PR departments also can benefit from tracking net sentiment and domain conversations analyzed by NetBase. In doing so, results can help facilitate crisis mitigation and potential undermining of brand equity with timely messaging to implement damage control in such situations as the 2011 viral hoax accusing Tommy Hilfiger of making racist remarks on the Oprah Winfrey show. As the Spanish theme chart below shows, the viral hoax sparked a significant volume of heated opinions among U.S. Hispanics and Spaniards, many calling for a brand boycott.

Among negative consumer voices, Spanish fashion sensibilities were piqued by questionable Hilfiger style and design choices, including an overly masculine women’s line, excess of preppy and checkered patterns and lack of variety in design. While the iconic Hilfiger kids brand line is famous for transforming the look of cheeky babies into an air of maturity, some Spanish adult consumers argued that Hilfiger’s preppy line “added twenty years” to their appearance.

With Spaniards appreciating Hilfiger for the brand’s longevity and sustained creativity—even rumors of a new dynamic surrounding Hilfiger’s desire to collaborate on a line with Lady Gaga—the brand’s aggressive global expansion may pay off if it can maintain the high net sentiment it now enjoys in Europe.

Insights :
• Investing in an advanced foreign-language NLP social insights and analytics solution surpasses low precision text analytics and buzz metrics.
• Cross-cultural social insights and analytics can be correlated with brand tracking, customer satisfaction, sales performance and other baseline brand health studies to inform global brand strategies and enhance forecasting.
• Native language social insights and analytics are highly cost effective, with exponential returns for end-to-end global marketing strategies.
• Theme mapping the voice of the consumer is an expeditious reliable method for uncovering new or unanticipated brand characteristics and attributes.
• Domain segmentation by country market reveals consumer behavior patterns key to strategic media planning.