Celine Brand Positioning Research

Celine positions itself as a high end expensive luxury brand, creating a luxury sportswear look within its clothes. It has traditional, elegant, sophisticated international values with it's ready to wear garments. 

Its competitors include other luxury brands such as Bottega Venetta, Balenciaga, Louis Vuitton, Mark Jacobs and Chloe. One of its main competitors is Zara with how it can create more affordable clothes with an almost identical look.

Celine has also come under scrutiny though through how it supposedly copied a Geoffrey Beene coat photographed in 2004, shown below. Karl Lagerfeld stated that after seeing both images of the new collection coat and that of Beene that he was "shocked". 

Brand Essence

The essence of a brand is shown through 4 separate sections attributes (what the brand stands for), promise (what the brand offers the customer), personality (who would the brand be) and the source of authority (what makes the brand credible). Within a recent seminar, after thoroughly discussing brand persuasion and what makes a brand, we created brand essence models. Firstly for the brand that we had currently been working on for module 1.

Tom Ford aims to make women feel confident and sexy, it promises this within it's clothes and personality. It derives it's sources of authority from 50's glamour and ambassadors such as Tom himself and Julianne Moore.

We then evaluated in pairs our day in the life of. Whilst doing this I picked a brand that I encountered to make a brand essence board, firstly without posting the name of the brand, for my partner to guess who it is, I created one on herbal essences which was correctly guessed. 

Herbal Essences is a luxury hair brand sold on the high street, it has many different attributes and personality traits as there is a wide range of flavoured shampoos and conditioners for different types of hair. It promises to do many things for all types of hair e.g undamage and smooth damaged hair. Its sources of authority come across in it's campaigns with the use of attractive models with amazing hair. 

Day in the Life of Branding

This task involved me keeping a diary for just one day in order to discover the impact that brands have on our daily lives and how they are entwined from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to sleep.

Saturday- 

10:00- wake up, make a drink, check phone and have a snack

. Robinsons Squash

. Sainsbury's mug

. Nokia Lumia 925

. Brioche

10:15- get back into bed

. Dunelm Covers

. Ikea Pillows and Blanket

10:17- put film on laptop

. Mac Book Pro- Apple

12:00- shower and brush teeth

. Herbal Essences

. Radox Scrub

. Aquafresh

12:30- blow dry, straighten hair and do make-up

. Phil Smith hairdryer

. Nicky Clarke straighteners

. Vaseline

. Rimmel

. Maybeline

. Benefit

. Collection 2000

. MUA

1:00- get dressed

. Vans

. Topshop

. Ebay

1:30- go for lunch

. Starbucks

4:00- get back and do some work

. Mac Book Pro, Apple

6:30- have dinner

. Tesco pizza

7:15- do washing up

. Tesco washing up liquid

7:30- curl hair, re-do makeup and put on clothes for a night out

. Babyliss

. Rimmel

. Maybeline

. Benefit

. Collection 2000

. MUA

8:30- Pre Drinks

. Tesco Vodka

. Robinsons Squash

. Malibu

11:00- leave flat and go to Rescue Rooms

. Jagermeister

. Red Bull

. Strongbow

3:00- get home and into bed

. Dunelm Covers

. Ikea Pillows and Blanket

Marks and Spencer Brand Positioning

In groups of 3 we were asked within a recent seminar activity to critically evaluate a well known brand pitching it against other competitors essentially differentiating what they're doing right and doing wrong marketing wise and branding themselves. Everyone within the seminar group was given Marks and Spencer (M & S) as within the past few years it has come under a lot of scrutiny for being somewhat dowdy and only aimed at a very old age range. 

'Britain's Leading Ladies'

Using our own knowledge we established that it is a high quality of clothes but the designs are old fashion and samey samey compared to one of it's main competitors 'Next'. They do try and use celebrities within their campaigns but they aren't targeting their celebrities to the right age ranges for example recently using Ellie Goulding and Rosie Huntington Whitley means that they are attempting to lower their age range but the classic style of clothes itself doesn't coincide with this. Next itself is more fashionable and trend orientated unlike M & S but the simple designs won't go out of fashion and when spending more money on something in M & S there is a guarantee that it will last. 

Rosie Huntington Whitley's lingerie range for M & S

They do incorporate limited edition pieces into their clothes and are in partnership with brands such as Phase 8, Peruna and Autograph which is where most of their clothing profit comes from. Unlike Next who only sell own brand products there are many differences between the overall in store environment of both. Next greets every customer at the door with a smile whilst M & S doesn't, this could be room for improvement for them as if a store was to greet me friendly I would be more inclined to buy something.

Personally I feel that Marks and Spencer need to change their target market not for young adults but 30+ in order to tap into a fashion conscious market of adults who can no longer dress like a teenager but also do not want to dress like an OAP. This would be a good starting point for them when re-launching and re-designing their women's wear within the coming months. I can say that Marks and Spencer market food very well especially with having specific stores in more rural areas which only stock food products.

The chart above shows a Perceptual Map of Marks and Spencer against it's other main competitors rating them on Price and whether their style of clothes are classic or Modern. The blue star shows where Marks and Spencer currently are while red star that I have placed on the chart shows where I would like to see Marks and Spencer in the future.