La Redoute kicks off strategic overhaul in drive to match M&S for brand awareness in UK
La Redoute’s British arm has overhauled its marketing strategy, including the way it works with agencies, in a bid to raise brand awareness which has thus far lagged behind some of its main rivals.
The French brand’s marketing chief, Heidi Kenyon-Smith, told The Drum that across the Channel claims it is the most visited website for womenswear, matching Marks and Spencer (M&S) in terms of unprompted brand recognition. However, in the UK it is a different story.
“La Redoute was actually founded in 1837. It’s an institution” she said. “But although we’ve been in the UK for 20 years, a lot of people in the UK don’t realise it. They think that we have a French name but aren’t genuinely French.”
It made moves to rectify this last year, with its first digital campaign to spread its ‘French Style Made Easy’ message. The activity centred on a film featuring unsuspecting women receiving complimentary messages from a mysterious Frenchman before it is revealed the true author of the words are the people closest to them.
The film received nearly 300,000 views on YouTube and has prompted the brand to move its 2015 marketing budget away from direct marketing, on which it had heavily relied in the past, to digital, social and above-the-line (ATL).
“We have a home shopping background and in the past we’ve not invested heavily in brand awareness because we’ve relied on having a great database. But we know that one of our biggest challenges is unprompted brand awareness; it’s very low. People don’t necessarily think about us when they are shopping online. That’s why we’re reviewing that and spending less on direct marketing and investing more in awareness activity.”
Kenyon-Smith has already made a raft of agency appointments in the past three months, including Cheetham Bell, iCrossing and Beattie Communications to handle creative, social and SEO, and PR respectively.
In the coming year, La Redoute will work much more collaboratively with them and expects the agencies to work together much more frequently than it has in the past.
“We’ve tended to work in silos with agencies and channels but we’ve recognised we need to change that. We’re going to be working in a much more collaborative way and have inter-agency meetings,” she explained, adding this is also vital if it is to stretch its marketing budget to match competitors.
“We don’t have these huge budgets that other retailers have so for us to have an impact we need to make sure that we’re maximising everything we’re doing and it’s amplified the best way we can.”
For the next 12 months Kenyon-Smith has prioritised ATL activity, including TV, and driving engagement with its social channels.
Kenyon-Smith admitted that La Redoute needs to be “bigger and better” on Facebook, its main channel, as well as Twitter and Instagram which it “currently doesn’t do anything on”. In the first step toward fostering a community on the latter, a plug-in will soon appear on the UK homepage allowing people to upload and share images of themselves in La Redoute clothing.
Beattie, the brand’s first PR agency in five years, will support the social activity by targeting fashion and lifestyle bloggers to help build endorsement and credibility.
Finally, experiential will for the first time play a major role in the comms activity as it looks to take its online-only experience offline. Kenyon-Smith was unable to go into any detail on the plans, but said: “One of the biggest challenges is not having that retail presence – we need to get out on the streets”.
While overall budget for the coming year has not been disclosed, La Redoute’s media agency – Carat – has been granted £6m media spend..