FMM5005 Fashion Marketing in Practice Port 1 Option 2: Fossil Brief
ST20139481
About Founded in 1984, Fossil are an American watch and accessories brand. The namesake of Fossil Group, a collection of sister brands and partners, it is a leader in watch design and innovation. Due to the diversity in their product range, Fossil have a large target market with a watch for anyone and every occasion. Founders of the Fossil Foundation, the brand donate 1% of every online purchase to drive change and reduce the global opportunity gap, particularly among youth. The brand have also committed to several sustainable goals for 2025, including 100% recyclable/ reusable packaging, reducing water consumption by 45%, and eliminate virgin plastics in the supply chain by 2030 (Fossil, 2021).
Brief
Fossil are looking to focus on a younger generation and help 18-24 year olds make time with Fossil. Since the rise of smart phones, the wrist watch as a way to keep time has become almost redundant, so finding compelling ways to connect to gen Z in increasingly important. This campaign aims to show Gen Z how to value their time.
PROPOSAL
Make Time For Calm with fossil
For this campaign, Fossil will partner with meditation app Calm. Calm is the ‘#1 app for Sleep, Meditation and Relaxation’ (Calm, 2021) and aims to help people find inner happiness and relaxation. Gen Z are twice as likely to practice mindfulness, according to the CDC (Poile, M. 2021) which makes Calm the perfect partner to connect with a younger demographic. Gen Z have been named ‘the most anxious generation’ with 56% worried about the mental health consequences of using smart technology too often (Poile, M. 2021). This shows that gen Z need to make and value time spent on themselves and their mental health. This mindset of self love and a focus on well being is also becoming a trend across multiple industries since the pandemic, recognising that ‘30% of people are expected to experience some kind of mental health issue in the wake of the pandemic’ (Poile, M. 2021). This partnership will not just increase brand awareness, but help 18-24 year olds make time for themselves.
PROPOSAL Make Time For Calm with fossssil
This #MakeTimeForCalm with Fossil campaign will run in May as it is mental health awareness month. It will be focused around a social media detox day on the last Sunday of the month. On this date on the calm app, using the code MakeTimeWithFossil, customers will be able to access exclusive guided meditations and beginner yoga classes to encourage the consumer to spend time on themselves. This anti social media day will also aim to get consumers to stay away from their phones, which is a cause of stress amongst generation Z (Gaffrey, A. 2020), and encourage them to check the time on a watch or clock as opposed to their phones. Throughout May, customers will be able to gain a free year calm membership when purchasing a smart watch to encourage the use of the watches features and the consumer to spend time on their mental wellbeing. Smart watches are growing in popularity amongst young people in particular, with over 32% already owning a smart watch or health tracker in 2019 (Attest, 2019). Another exclusive within this campaign will be a free Fossil incense tray and meditation incense as well as a copy of the Calm book with any online purchase with the code MakeTimeForCalm. This limited edition offer will encourage purchases and encourage the consumer to destress with mindfulness. Throughout the month Fossil will partner with Calm and Yogi Sam, who they collaborated with throughout lockdown, to run meditative yoga and stretch classes on Instagram Live. These sessions are experiences to connect the consumer to the brand and make people happier and have a greater sense of wellbeing compared to purchasing goods (Pine, J. Gilmore, J. 2011).
PROPOSAL
Make Time For Calm with fossil
This collaboration will appeal to 18-24 year olds because they are in need of stress relief. With many young people weighed down by climate guilt as shown by the number involved in the 2019 youth strikes for climate they need an avenue to release. 50% of gen Z feel they do not do enough to manage their stress (Poile, M. 2021), the collaboration will give them tools to do so. Helping this generation help themselves is also important. Gen Z are more outspoken about mental health than previous generations (Gaffrey, A. 2020) and often reject ‘toxic positivity’. Partnering with Calm and encouraging personal growth gives less focus to positivity and more focus on listening. Gen Z make decisions ‘based on their values’ (Gaffrey, A. 2020), so it is important that Fossil also communicate their efforts on sustainability, closing the opportunity gap and creating innovative products as these are all things that gen Z value.
PROPOSAL
Make Time For Calm with fossil
‘Partnering with outside organisations can help brands maintain relevance through participation rather than just influence’ (Gaffrey, A 2020). The focus of this campaign will be to connect with an anxious generation and get gen Z to value looking self care and spend time on themselves. This collaboration will build up the Fossil brand as a community caring organisation. This sincerity is important to gen Z and should continue to be part of the brand moving forward. Due to the pandemic hitting Gen Z at such crucial life stages, they prefer initiatives that ‘foster community and togetherness’ (Poile, M. 2021) This collaboration will do this through connecting with the audience through live yoga sessions and encouraging sharing in a digital detox day. It will be suggested to increase awareness of the event and to prevent potential anxieties that those taking part in the day off social media announce it on their personal scial media platforms with the caption ‘I am going to #MakeTimeForCalm’ so people know you’re safe.
SMART OBJECTIVES
Objective This objective is to grow the Fossil instagram followers by 300,000 from 1.2m to 1.5m (+25%) within mental health awareness month. Although a challenging goal, the brand will be exposed to the 2.5m Calm followers as well as on their app which has over 10m downloads.
Objective 2
Objective 3
This objective is to increase sales by 15% compared to April. This is a realistic second objective because if 60% of the new instagram followers make a purchase, this goal will be easily achieved. Using promotional giveaways should also sway new customers to make a purchase.
Increasing engagement by 15% on the Fossil instagram can be tracked through Instagram's Insight Function. This goal will be achieved through consistent and regular uploads as well as appealing content such as Instagram Lives and shareable posts.
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Objective
The ultimate goal for this project is to encourage mindfulness in the gen Z community to promote valuing time. This goal is harder to be quantified, so will be measured two weeks after May through a survey sent to those who participated in the make time for calm campaign.
CRITICAL EVALUATION
Growing the Fossil Instagram is important as social media is a cheap way of getting information to consumers quickly. According to The Digital Fairy in 2020, Social media clout accounts for 10% of a great brand. And aesthetic makes up 22% (The Digital Fairy, 2020) and as a visual platform, Instagram is a great place to show this.
disadvantaged children and youth.
Increasing Sales is important to continue growing the brand and gives the brand opportunity to be more innovative and create new products. It also means more money will be donated to the Fossil Foundation to help
This campaign will encourage mindfulness to support generation Z in looking after their own mental health and wellbeing. This comes at a crucial post pandemic time where this generation crave support and community.
Increased engagement is a great way to track what consumers enjoy and what they dislike as engaged customers are more likely to make a purchase and/ or speak positively about the company online and by word of mouth.
GANTT CHART
Date in May
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Announce Calm collaboration Instagram Live Yoga/Mindfulness Freebie codes Instagram Detox day countdown
Engagement and growth checks Social Media Detox Day
The Announcement of the collaboration will be on both Fossil and Calm’s instagram accounts for maximum exposure
The detox day countdown will include the #MakeTimeForCalm hashtag and encourage those taking part to do the same.
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RESOURCES
The Fossil Instagram will be one of the main resources used for this campaign as it is earnt media, so is cost efficient and a quick way to connect with customers. This is where the Instagram live yoga and meditation sessions will take place, as well as visuals sharing information about the collaboration. The Calm Instagram will also be used to post about promotional codes and to share the message spending time on you - self love and individual well being. The other main point of focus will be the Fossil Website. Changes to the website will include a Make Time For Calm page which will contain tips on how to de-stress, ways to spread positivity and tackle cyber bullying as 1 in 3 young people will experience online hate. (UNICEF (Gaffrey, A. 2020)). On this page will be listed all the details of the collaboration as well as a timetable for the upcoming events.
RESOURCES
The Calm App will be another resource that this campaign will use to expose the brand to new customers. The app will house exclusive Make Time With Fossil content as well as information about the social media detox day.
Fossils mailing list will be used to inform current customers aged 18-24 about the collaboration. It will also be used to receive feedback after the campaign to measure the success of the collaboration.
STAKEHOLDERS
The customers are key stakeholders as the campaign is for them and so their feedback is very valuable. The first customer feedback will be requested on the 14th day of the campaign and then weekly until two weeks after mental health awareness month. Customer feedback will be taken from surveys, testing the campaigns reach, how engaging it was and how many customers took part and/ or are continuing mindful practices post events.
The Calm app is a stakeholder in this collaboration as the main party besides Fossil. Data concerning the number of people signing up for membership with the promotional code, the number of people accessing the exclusive ‘make time with fossil’ content, and the age of these customers. This will give fossil an idea of how successful the collaboration has been.
Competitors wouldn’t be communicated with directly, but should be used as comparisons to track brand growth and collaboration success.
The Fossil Foundation are stakeholders because part of their donations and funding come from Fossil online sales. They should experience more exposure due to the project.
Bibliography •
Attest. (2019). Share of respondents who own a smart watch/health-tracker computing device in the United Kingdom in 2019 (UK), by generation. Statista. Statista Inc.. Available at: https://www-statistacom.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/statistics/1044033/uk-smartwatch-health-trackert-ownership/ (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Fossil (2021) fossil .com [Online] Available at: https://www.fossil.com (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Fossil Foundation (2021) fossil foundation .org [Online] Available at: http://www.fossilfoundation.org/who-weare/ (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Fossil Group (2021) fossil group .com [Online] Available at: https://www.fossilgroup.com/brands/ (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Gaffrey, A (2020) Report: what brands need to know about mental health and marketing to gen Z. Vogue Business. [Online] Available at: https://www.voguebusiness.com/companies/report-data-brands-mental-health-andmarketing-to-gen-z (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Office for National Statistics UK (ONS UK). (2021). Annual expenditure on jewellery, clocks and watches in the United Kingdom (UK) from 2005 to 2020, based on volume. Statista. Statista Inc. Available at: https://wwwstatista-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/statistics/301067/annual-expenditure-on-jewellery-clocks-and-watchesin-the-united-kingdom-uk/ (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Poile, M (2021) Gen Z priorities 2021. WGSN. [Online] Available at: https://www-wgsncom.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/insight/article/90391 (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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Pine, J. Gilmore, J. (2011) The experience economy. Updated edition. Harvard business review press. Boston.
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The Digital Fairy. (2020). What makes a great Gen Z brand? . Statista. Statista Inc.. Available at: https://wwwstatista-com.ezproxy.cardiffmet.ac.uk/statistics/1119926/what-makes-a-great-gen-z-brand-uk/ (Accessed 20/05/2021)
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REFLECTION Three things to be done differently in future projects PESTEL Analysis In future projects I would complete a full PESTEL analysis on the macro environment. I didn’t complete an official PESTEL analysis in the project as I only focused on Social issues for generation Z as it was the most relevant for this idea. A lot of PESTEL information is also assumed in this project as it is current, however this will make it difficult to contextualise later and makes for an incomplete analysis. Mock-ups
I would also create more mock-ups to demonstrate the vision so the reader has a better understanding of the concept and how it would look in real life. Unfortunately as mock-ups take a long time to create, I didn’t leave myself enough time to produce as many as I would prefer. I am please with the logo I managed to create however, as seen on the previous page, I prefer to create many mock-ups and then narrow it down which means it is not time efficient. The presentation of the information, however, is still on brand and stylised, but still doesn’t give as much visual information as mock ups. Primary Data I was also planning on including some primary data in this project, however I lost the results of my questionnaire as I dint realise they would only be viewable for 24 hours. In the future I will use a more formal questionnaire software such as Qualtrics or google forms so I am able to use the results.
REFLECTION Why and how these would improve the overall project PESTEL Analysis In future projects I would complete a full PESTEL analysis on the macro environment to help contextualise the area of interest instead of relying on my own and the readers own current knowledge. This means the project could be more easily misinterpreted and seem less fully researched. A full PESTEL analysis would also help me recognise gaps in the market that this project could fit into. Mock-ups Mock ups help make a vision come to life and let the reader envision how a project would turn out if carried through. More mock ups and visuals would also make the project easier to understand and have clearer outcome. Mock ups also help the work to be seen in a professional context and as a finished product rather than a design Primary Data Primary data would improve this project by ensuring the direction was appropriate and interesting to the target market. It would also make choices clearer and easier to justify as sometimes it is hard to find the type of data you need. For example in this project, I was looking for a statistic on watch wearing by generation and only managed to find one that was relevant for this project. But when collecting you own data, you can specify what information you want. (Some of the questions from my questionnaire are on the right for context)
REFLECTION Ways I could improve my personal skills Time Management and planning I found this project particularly difficult to plan as I got slightly overwhelmed by the different routes and briefs available and the broad nature of the task. In the future I will make sure to clarify earlier what I am completing for each task and how I will do so. Planning earlier will also allow more time for in depth research and to create visuals and mock ups. For the next project I will write out my plan on the document before starting which will give me a clear vision of how much is complete and what is left to do. Creating a plan first will also help with time management as I can complete it section by section. Formal writing Another personal skill I will be improving on is my formal writing ability. Especially after writing for a long time, I slip back into very casual, informal language which isn’t appropriate on a report for a brand. To improve this I will practice my formal writing and write in shorter sections to allow for more focus which improves my writing quality.