Hollister Marketing Strategies

In our society today a business is not a business without an advertisement. These advertisements advertise what American’s want and desire in their lives. According to Jack Solomon in his essay, “Master’s of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising,” Jack Solomon claims: “Because ours is a highly diverse, pluralistic society, various advertisements may say different things depending on their intended audiences, but in every case they say something about America, about the status of our hopes, fears, desires, and beliefs”(Solomon). Advertisers continue to promote the American dream of what a women’s body should look like. They advertise their products in hopes for consumers to buy them, so they can look like the models pictures in the ads. Behind these ads, advertisers tend to picture flawless unrealistic woman with the help of Photoshop. In our society today to look like a model is an American dream and can be the reasons why we fantasizes and buy these products being advertised. “America’s consumer economy runs on desire, and advertising stokes the engines by transforming common objects;signs of all things that Americans covet most”(Solomon).

In an essay written by Jim Fowles, “Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals” he says advertising manipulates individuals to buy things they do not need. Advertisements use many emotional appeals such is the need for sex, escape, aesthetic sensation, satisfy curiosity and guidance. Today, Calvin Klein advertisements captures majority of individual’s attention. It is a well-known brand and expensive. It is known for their jeans and underwear. Calvin Klein apparel, underwear, shoes, and accessories can be found and brought online stores, malls, and outlet malls. Many famous celebrities and musician artists posed for Calvin Klein’s advertisement campaigns, wearing Calvin Klein jeans, shirts, sweaters, jackets, bras, purses, and underwear. Calvin Klein

The aim of this paper is to provide an insight into Hollister Co.’s marketing communications and assess whether it successfully targets my demographic of young, male recent college graduates. The paper will first introduce Hollister and provide a brief company history as well as outlining the challenges in reaching out to consumers such as myself who differ from the brand’s intended targets. It will then segue to discussing Hollister’s position within the market and any outlying challenges the brand has navigated through.

Recently American Eagle’s lingerie brand, Aerie, completely changed their advertising campaign to AerieReal. The AerieReal campaign consists of only un-retouched and no Photoshopped models. Before the AerieReal campaign, Aerie used models that were retouched and Photoshopped to make the models appear skinner and “more attractive”. The AerieReal campaign’s focus is to defy what other lingerie brands, such as Victoria’s Secret, sell in their advertisements. Aerie is trying to challenge the message of true beauty is only if you are skinny by saying that “The real you is sexy”. Aerie is accomplishing this by changing their advertisements in the hopes that girls will grow up to be socialized with a more positive and inclusive message, defy gender roles associated with women, and lastly, confront stereotypes of white and colored women.

In “The Fashion Industry: Free to be an Individual” by Hannah Berry, Hannah emphasizes how social media especially advertisements pressure females to use certain product to in order to be considered beautiful. She also acknowledges the current effort of advertisement today to more realistically depicts of women. In addition, these advertisements use the modern women look to advertise products to increase women self-esteem and to encourage women to be comfortable with one’s image.

Behavioral: Benefits - Show-off, being popular, being sexier Attitude toward product - Positive, sexual attractive, American lifestyle Not many companies use mass marketing these days. Instead, they practice target marketing by identifying market segments, selecting one or more of them, and developing products and marketing mixes tailored for each. A&F is a successful brand that targets the A&F, Analysis Report young generation market precisely. Based on our survey, A&F has achieved phenomenal success by portraying a brand image that comprises a series of very attractive imagery. Teenagers see a lot of this imagery through advertisements; however, what influences them most is their peers (Goodman & Dretzin, 1999).

Today, more than ever, teenage girls are influenced by magazines, billboards, television, movies, and most of all advertisements. While the advertisements of models that have been airbrushed to flawlessness may sell products, the effects on teen girls is undeniable. Over the past decade the numbers of depression, eating disorders, and hypersexuality in young girls has been steadily on the rise. False advertising in way of airbrushing, heavy editing, and photoshopping models has had negative effects on teen girls and according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) policy, false advertisement is illegal. It may be stretching it calling photoshopping false advertising, but nonetheless manipulating young, impressionable girls into believing

For women, advertising exemplifies the ideal female body. According to Kilbourne, young girls are taught from a very early age that they need to spend lots of time and money to achieve this “physical perfection.” But realistically this cannot be achieved. The ideal woman’s body is Caucasian, very skinny, big breasts, no flaws, and pretty much no pores. This cannot be achieved because it is physically impossible to look like this; the illusion comes from the secret world of Photoshop. No woman is beautiful enough so they leave it to technology to create perfection. The supermodel Cindy Crawford said, “I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford!” She knew the realities of Photoshop and body image, and more women and girls need to become aware of this as well.

Competitor Analysis over Hollister Target Market According to bloomberg.com, Hollister is for a younger audience, between the ages of 12-18 (Berfield, 2015). Recent marketing done by Hollister Co. would imply that they are now aiming for a slightly larger audience. These consumers are both male and female and typically identify as lower-middle to upper-middle class.

Every time you flip a magazine, change channels, or go online, you are struck with images of models who are super skinny with flashy outfits and have excessive make-up on. Ads not only try to sell their products, but also promote how females should look like. These models are airbrushed and photo shopped which is false advertisement. The media progressively encourages a thinner body image as the ideal for women. We see advertisements every day. Some of these ads use manipulative strategies that influence our choices and spending habits. For example, “One in every three articles in leading teen girl magazines included a focus on appearance, and most advertisements used appeal to beauty to sell their products.”(Teen Health) To grab the viewers’ attention, especially females, they include

Gender role bias in advertisements has been so prevalent for so long that the untrained eye wouldn't even discern it. All the same, these biases, for the most part, put women in subordinate positions and men in dominant ones. This assumption on both the genders is unfair and demeaning. These ads portray women as subservient and play toys for men. Not only do the models depict an image nowhere near close to reality, but their bodies are scantily clad and what few clothes they are wearing are very revealing.

Finally, the fifth and sixth stages of product adoption are adoption and confirmation. Adoption is where the customer actually buys the new good and confirmation is where he or she likes the product and continues to purchase it (Solomon, pg. 256). Since the beginning, CK’s marketing methods have always been about sex appeal. This goes to show that throughout the times CK’s sexy, barely-clothed model advertisements are adopted and liked by consumers. Consumers from any generation feed off the idea of being sexy when wearing the brand, and that is what

“Sex sells” is probably one of the most used catch phrases that every generation understands starting in their adolescents. With the right to freedom of information and availability of the internet access, there cannot be limits set on adolescent’s exposure to such media marketing. This becomes a challenge as every generation seems to be getting more active and savvy in their use of technology, earlier and earlier. However, the phenomenon of barely clothed men is new even to the younger generations today as it corresponded with the recent normalization of gay culture in the mass media as suggested by Parasecoli. Further, the author confirms that “the enthrallment with the body image, previously imposed mostly on women, is now becoming a common feature in identification processes” (p. 284). Seeing a man in an overtly sexual ad, even when the product that is being sold is unrelated to sex, has become a common

Separating a product from the ideological incentive driving the purchasing of the product requires a critical mind that is often difficult to acquire. If a bra is bought solely for its function, why are stores like Victoria’s Secret made more available in shopping malls, or raking in high grossing profit margins from sheer popularity? This is because Victoria’s Secret, like many other successful business enterprises, sells their brand as a way to conduct oneself. “I shop, therefore I am,” in other words, buying and wearing their underwear or lingerie gives license to be recognized by others as existing within a certain category of person. This concept of brand identity is the concept that Naomi Klein sharpens in her work, No Logo. A transformation occurs where Victoria’s Secret’s underwear “is not a product, but a way of life, an attitude, a set of values, a look, an idea.” (18). How exactly does the company place an idea behind the bras they sell? For that answer, I turn to Jean-Noel Kapferer, an expert on brands and brand management who created the “Brand Identity Prism”. As a management strategy, this prism guides a product from raw material to an ideological principle, eliciting an emotional, targeted response from the consumer. In other words, how the external qualities (company image construction) correlates with the consumer internalization of the product (public reception of the ideology). It is the experience that the product itself provides for the consumer that

“Just do it”, “Protect this house”, and “Impossible is Nothing” are all logos that are plastered on our cellular devices, worn on the soles of our feet and back, and most valuable to society. In fact, individuals are judged if they do not brand themselves with these logos. In “Who Makes the Clothes We Wear”, Jesse Jackson persuades his readers using ethos, pathos, and logos, to think about the disturbing ethics behind name brand clothing production.