Can United Colors of Benetton’s new focus on Italian roots help reignite the brand?
Once synonymous with provocative advertising United Colors of Benetton has worked hard to distance itself from such ‘shockvertising’ as it moves to focus on product, not political messages. Now the brand is looking to its Italian roots and fashion innovation as a way to differentiate itself in an environment where fast fashion proves ever more popular.
Can United Colors of Benetton’s new focus on Italian roots help reignite the brand?
Sitting just 40 minutes from Venice, Italy, the city of Treviso is perhaps better known as the Ryanair hub to the floating city than a hotbed of fashion. However, the once politically charged fashion brand Benetton has been head-quartered there since its inception in 1965, and is now looking to the city as inspiration for a new product line that it hopes will set it apart from its competitors.
The new line is the latest move in the brand’s repositioning. In summer 2016 Benetton introduced a new advertising strategy that saw it cement its move away from politically charged communications, which once featured an image of a man dying from HIV, to better hone in on its iconic knitwear and concentrate on its consumers. The £16.8m ‘Clothes for Humans’ campaign was created to make shoppers more strongly aware of the brand’s purpose, which is the modern human being and their everyday moments.
In an extension of that positioning Benetton is now hoping that a €2m investment in new knitting technology will show consumers that it is serious about its fashion credentials. The company has decided to pay homage to its very first jumper and has reallocated 36 knitting machines at its Treviso headquarters to manufacture a made in Italy product ‘in house’. Named after the postcode of the city (TV31100) the idea behind the new line was to create something that not only celebrates the brand’s roots and history but also revives an important connection with its home territory.
Manufactured with one single thread, TV31100 is totally seamless for a figure-hugging fit that allows for freedom of movement. Speaking to The Drum, Gianluca Pastore, global marketing and communications director of United Colors of Benetton said the new product line forms part of the recent marketing strategy and is the “perfect evolution” to better focus on people and what the brand can do to make life more comfortable for its consumers.
“Conceptually there is a very strong relationship between ‘Clothes for Humans’ and TV31100, because if you consider the idea of made in Treviso as project it's exactly made for freedom of movement which is a unique platform. It's important for people to try it because when they do they immediately get it.”
“The design [of the product] and the way humans live today through their daily lives and needs is why we are hoping we are moving in the right direction.”
It’s a bet that the company desperately needs. While brand awareness is still high, demand for its clothes is not. Benetton’s business model of not following fashion trends quick enough and only changing them seasonally meant it started to fall behind its trendier fast fashion rivals such as Zara. Consequently, sales were sluggish, rising only 2% between 2000 and 2011, and in 2015 they were down 1.2% to £1.25bn from the previous year.
While it is too soon to gauge whether the new campaign is truly driving sales, Pastore said that initial figures are “super good”, and it is resonating with consumers.
“As you know Humans is exactly putting together again the brand aspect with the product aspect to remind consumers what we stand for. In the past they were not exactly going in a different direction, but in parallel to one another. Consumers very much like us talking about their real lives and talking about them as humans, so this product line being human centric is a real iconic sync between the products and the brand.”
In terms of marketing, the new product will be pushed out through a content strategy to inform consumers of the story behind the jumper and its roots in Treviso. Digital will play a large role, as will bloggers, and the activity will follow a release in a number of markets on the shop floor in mid November.
While Pastore was vague on the details of the advertising strategy for TV31100, he did allude that it would be a product driven story for the brand going forward, a marked difference from the brand that once advertised the Pope kissing Ahmed el-Tayeb, imam of Egypt's al-Azhar Mosque.
“We are in a different stage, it is an evolution in the style of communications for Benetton,” he continued. “There is no more provoking in this case, we never provoked for the sake of it, but in this case it's a very product drive story and the products can tell a lot about humans which fits with our overall campaign.”