quarta-feira, janeiro 19, 2005: Richard Tomkins: The wrong kind of customers

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In the US, luxury brands find themselves embraced by another unintended market: rappers and their fans. Brands figure so prominently in hip-hop music that Agenda, a brand consultancy, compiles a chart tracking the number of times they are mentioned in the lyrics of the top 20 best-selling singles. Last year, Cadillac topped Agenda's chart with no fewer than 70 mentions, with the likes of Hennessy, Gucci and Bentley not far behind.

Lucian James, Agenda's president, points out that the brand patter is more than just wishful thinking. Purchases by rappers and their fans have given a big boost to sales of Cadillac's Escalade - a monstrous 4x4 - and an even bigger one to many drink and designer clothing brands.

One possible response by brand owners to such unexpected popularity is to exploit it to the full. That is what Tommy Hilfiger did in the 1990s. Originally, the company's classic, preppy clothing was aimed at the well-heeled country club set. But when rappers adopted the brand, it did an about-turn and adopted the hip-hop look, churning out baggy clothes with huge logos at lower prices. Business boomed - only to slump when fans tired of the Tommy Hilfiger name and moved on. Now a new chief executive is trying to rescue the brand from its identity crisis.

So should brand-owners go to the opposite extreme? That appears to be Burberry's preferred strategy, and you can understand why. Hip-hop culture, after all, at least has the virtue of being cool, while chavvery is about as crass as it gets. Burberry stopped making its baseball cap in an effort to drive away its unwanted customers - though the move had little effect because most of the Burberry worn by chavs is counterfeit.
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FT.com

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