A Marketing and Communication Plan for All Saints (Research Paper Sample)

A Marketing and Communication Plan for All Saints
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All Saints- An Introduction
All Saints has initiated its business in the year 1994. Initially, it was just a brand for men; wholesaling its products to Harrods, Harvey Nichols and Barneys Japan and New York. On the 1st of November, 1997, they had opened their very first distinct store at the Fouberts Place. The store displayed the complete collection of the menswear. In the year 1998, All Saints has also launched their brands for women. Now, All Saints has established a portfolio of fifty stores in the United Kingdom, seventeen in the Europe and five stores in the United States of America CITATION Sam14 \l 1033 (Zalaznick, n.d.).
From its very beginning, All Saints possesses an extended standing background of cooperating with and promoting the music industry cream. Stereophonics, U2, Kings of Leon and Kelis were among the foremost artists who have worked with the All Saints brand CITATION ALL14 \l 1033 (Anon., 2014).
Brand Health
All Saints possesses extraordinary brand awareness. The customers who are familiar with the All Saints brands immediately recognize their products whenever they spot them, even if the products are not in the All Saints store (Hulbert, Capon and Piercy 2005). For instance, All Saints is enormously famous for its fabulous and unique coats. So if a person owns a coat of All Saints, then that person receives several compliments and a large number of people identify and appreciate it as an All Saints coat; when that individual wears it.
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 1: ALL SAINTS COAT CITATION All141 \l 1033 (Anon., n.d.)
All Saints primarily emphasizes upon connecting its brands with the famous personalities on their personal platforms CITATION Jul10 \l 1033 (Finch, 2010). The All Saints brand is commonly perceived as a more autonomous, almost the distributor of dark fashion; and the brand has also been connected with operating in the unusual direction when compared to the other brands. But this should not be taken as a negative comment, but rather a perception of All Saints as a reckless and a pioneer symbol in the backdated fashion ambience.
SWOT Analysis of the All Saints
Strengths
The major strength of All Saints is that the brand is not at all led by any sorts of trends. The identity of the brand is evidently strong and clear. The garments produced by All Saints are of real high quality and they possess remarkable style. There are also a lot of short films which are associated with the All Saints brand in an excellent manner CITATION GIR10 \l 1033 (Anon., 2010). The brand is being run digitally and there are no television advertisements or posters. The All Saints people highly emphasize upon social networking and the page of YouTube contains all of the All Saints music sessions, films and campaigns.
Weaknesses
The brand of All Saints is facing some sort of financial problems. Moreover, they have got restricted range of brands like there is no range of sleepwear, underwear, home wear, tall/ petite. As they are promoting their brand only in a digital way, so this factor is restricting the brand audience. Considering all the renowned brands, All Saints has made an enormous budget cut in its advertising too.
Opportunities
All Saints can do vigorous advertising for the ranges of product other than the women’s and the men’s wear like toiletries, fragrances and home furnishings CITATION RUT10 \l 1033 (FERLA, 2010). All Saints can also spread out and can do a television advertisement by making use of one of its distinctive short films upon fashion. All Saints can also advance further in the market and can offer the intimate wears too.
Threats
With the passage of time, the All Saints customers are getting aged but it is just aiming towards those customers who are in their twenties. This practice can obstruct their sales. So it’s high time for All Saints to serve both the ages. All Saints is also fighting hard against the brands like Topshop and Zara who are offering the similar sort of high street brands on much cheaper rates. Further, there is a rise in the product costs for All Saints, which could result in the lost of the customers for it.
Competitor Analysis for All Saints
Zara and Topshop are the major competitors of All Saints in both the UK and the USA market.
Zara is the Spanish clothing brand established in 1975. It is one of the biggest retailers of fashion and the prime selling brand. From the year 1975 to the year 2014, Zara has expanded its line of stores and now it owns more than fifteen thousand and forty stores across the world. This demonstrates the acceptability and privilege Zara has received from the masses CITATION Mar12 \l 1033 (Tungate, 2012).
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 2: ZARA CITATION Zar14 \l 1033 (Anon., 2014)
Topshop is being considered as an idol of the British style and it is being loved by the celebrities and the students alike. In recent times, this fashion chain owns four hundred and forty stores on an international basis, having three hundred stores in the Britain alone. Topshop also ships to more than one hundred countries CITATION Hei10 \l 1033 (Heinemann & Schwarzl, 2010).
Figure SEQ Figure \* ARABIC 3: TOPSHOP CITATION Top14 \l 1033 (Anon., n.d.)
Zara and Topshop are strong competitors of All Saints because they also possess a really powerful brand image communicated by means of easily identifiable logos. Zara and Topshop compete sharply with All Saints regarding the sales of accessories as well as the garments. However, Zara and Topshop are not facing any sort of financial problems like All Saints. This factor is providing an edge to them upon the All Saints.
All Saints- Vision and Objectives
The vision of All Saints is being communicated with the help of their mission statement, i.e. to produce a brand that mingles fashion and music into a vigorous formula of attractive clothing that exhibits attitude and individuality. All Saints penetrates by means of its strategy regarding social media, the design of their stores, e- commerce and the selection of their designs. Over the years, All Saints has been successful in creating a unique identification for itself amid the style aware shoppers as a novel stop for the fashion being led by the designs that never chase the trends.
Brand essence (emotional & functional values, personality)
The brand essence of All Saints products is the distinctiveness from its competitors and decent look that it provides to the consumers. This has created its customers to have emotional attachment with the brand and shows loyalty. However, the functional values that the brand offers is affordable apparel with continuous engagement with both men and women wear. Besides this, the personality of the brand is luxury products that it offers to its customers.
All Saints- Positioning and Customer Segmentation
The name of All Saints has become compatible with the cutting edge trend for those having the fashion sense. They direct towards the style conscious and trendy niche. All Saints has chosen a unique attitude for their retail, online and marketing strategies with a target statistics of 18- 35.
All Saints has chosen gender distribution in their attitude to the social media and they always post individually about the menswear and the women’s wear CITATION All10 \l 1033 (Anon., 2010). They have driven successful participation from both the women and the men on an equal basis. All Saints target women with the posts regarding fashionable and trendy collections and men with the music posts. Through this approach they have developed a devoted fan base. All Saints evidently provides a fascinating example of the fact that in what ways companies can sensibly grasp the most productive ways in order to gain participation from their customers CITATION All14 \l 1033 (Anon., 2014). Their site of e- commerce, their retail concepts, campaigns of the social media, music service and an extreme focus on the autonomous fashion have helped All Saints in securing its place as a truly genuine and a financially feasible brand of the recent times.
PEST analysis
The following is the PEST analysis of All Saints:
Political factors
Among others, one big political concern is the misuse of low-priced labour that are available in third world or developing countries as the price competition, globalised trading, international competition to expand geographically have increased importance of labour chain (Pride and Ferrell 2004). For this, many campaigns are being held for international regulation, child labour and workers’ rights. Moreover, the European Union has also set legislations and restrictions to protect worker’s rights (Debelak 2000). Thus, All Saints has to consider all these issues while operating and expanding in European Union countries. Besides this, the company also follows all the laws and regulations while operating in UK (Aaker 2012).
Economic factors
All Saints also consider various economic factors as these have large impact on the business operations. In UK, the increase in VAT and shift towards off-shoring of the domestic production has affected the economy (Gronlund 2013). In addition, the decline of domestic manufacturing has left consumers with few choices of high priced products. This has affected the buyer’s decision to purchase products (Baker 2012). Although, All Saints products are affordable, but overall impact of economic factors could affect its business in UK. Besides this, the recession of 2007 still has impact on the economy of UK that has affected the demand and consumption of apparel and other accessories.
Social factors
Different social factors also have an impact on the business operations (Cheverton 2005). Many...