Armani Gold Principle: Multi Brand Line To Shape Brand Equity

Bian Xiangyang: doctor and professor. Famous fashion critics, fashion brands and fashion historians, fashion industry and fashion culture experts. Director and director of art design department, School of costume and art design, Donghua University, tutor of invited doctoral tutor of Bermingham School of art and design, UK. Visiting scholar of Harvard University. Shanghai is a consulting expert of fashion industry, chairman of the academic committee of China Fashion Designers Association, and an expert committee of China Fashion Association. Presided over a number of national, provincial and ministerial level research projects.

Italy brand Armani It owns many brand lines, but it is not like Louis mohon group or GUCCI group. It is a collection of different luxury brands, but it is entirely a self created brand. Although different brands of Armani are targeted at different consumer groups, they all come from the same style to the name. It has formed a strong brand family through more than 20 brand lines, making Armani's brand value ranked the ninety-fourth among the top 100 global brands in Interbrand in 2009, reaching 3 billion 300 million dollars.

　 Fashion features: three designs Golden rule

Giorgio Armani once said: "my design follows three golden principles: one is to remove anything unnecessary; the two is to pay attention to comfort; the three is the most gorgeous thing is the most concise."

Marketing strategy: interaction between brand family and brand equity

Armani now has a compact brand cluster consisting of more than 20 brand lines. It starts from Giorgio Armani, and when its brand value reaches a certain level, it derives Emporio Armani from different market segments and succeeds. This further improves brand equity, and then releases new brand lines in a timely manner, so as to link up the brand family and brand assets so as to make brand assets keep pace with the times.

Celebrity effect promotes brand image

There is a popular saying in Hollywood: "when you don't know what to wear, it's right to wear Armani."

Since 1980, Armani has started to design costumes for celebrities to attend various high places. He is the first modern fashion designer to recognize the potential of celebrity market. To this end, he set up an office in Losangeles to rent clothes for celebrities to meet their needs in clothing. The frequent exposure of designers and stars on various occasions has created a win-win situation.

Armani always chooses to invite the most popular stars as spokesmen. For example, in 2010, Armani replaced Megan Fox and Beckham with Transformers's heroine, as a new spokesperson for Mpurio Armani's underwear. He also took part in the shooting of another brand, Armani Jeans.

In addition, Armani signed a cooperation agreement with the British Chelsea football club for 3 years. Fans can also buy copies of new clothes at Emporio Armani store in England. What's more interesting is that the Ukraine player, Sheva, a former Ukraine advertising endorsement, has invested in a Armani store in her hometown.

Strengthening control through acquisitions

Armani has bought a lot of companies or distributors for its own OEM production. But the principle of its acquisition is not to acquire other brands. On the one hand, Armani group realized the control of most production and distribution by cash, on the other hand, it was also helpful to understand the needs of customers through distributors and factories, and also guaranteed the continuation of brand style. Armani insists on observing the daily sales data from all over the world every day to carry out research and analysis to grasp the market trend.

Strengthening control over retail terminals

It is also one of Armani's marketing strategies to actively launch its retail stores and strengthen control over the retail outlets. {page_break}

Armani brand settled in Italy Milan market in 1974, entered the London market in 1989 and entered the US market in 1991. In 1998, Armani came to China. In April 2004, Shanghai opened Armani's largest flagship store in China. By early 2009, Armani group had more than 500 retail outlets in 46 countries around the world. The group adopts a matrix organizational structure. Each manager is responsible for the leadership of the local market and the superior leaders of the corresponding functional departments of the group headquarters, and reports on the work. In this way, the headquarters control over the retail terminal is strengthened, so that information can be sent back to headquarters quickly and make corresponding decisions as soon as possible.

　　 Typical case: Armani Brand extension

Case introduction

With the brand extension method, Armani's fashion empire has longitudinally covered the needs of different consumer groups of children, adolescents, mature men and women. From a horizontal perspective, it has also launched a comprehensive lifestyle experience for different groups, including clothing, accessories, cosmetics, perfume, home series, and pen series for business people.

Armani believes that fashion trends should not be confined to clothing and shoes, but to cover everyday life. Today, he is looking forward to a broader world. For example, Armani has worked with Samsung Electronics and Microsoft to launch smart phones; and Emaar real estate company signed a Amani Residence Hotel and resort cooperation project in 2005, and plans to develop, own and operate a series of high-end hotels, resorts and luxury residences in major cities and resorts around the world. The first Amani Residence Hotel opened in March 18, 2010 in the world's tallest Dubai tower. The hotel has 175 rooms equipped with Armani, 5 restaurants and a Armani spa. The era of wearing Armani clothing, touching Armani perfume, using Armani mobile phones and staying at Amani Residence Hotel has arrived.

Case analysis

Brand extension is a brand sustainable development strategy with good reputation and sense of value. It is also an important measure for brand equity construction and utilization. Like Armani, a fashion brand with high popularity and huge production and sales system, how to continue its brand value and profit from it is the first problem that the group needs to solve. Armani has always been pragmatic. Since 1980s, it has begun to lower the luxury high head and try to launch a lower price sub line brand to seize the young emerging market. Time proved that his strategy was very successful at that time. Young people could sigh at Armani's black dress, but at least wear a T-shirt with Armani or A/X logo to show off fashion.

Now, after the Second World War, the baby boom generation has been flourish, and the sub line brands have sprouted and blooming among other luxury brands. Armani has begun to consider the more fashionable service for the most consumptive young people. They can afford expensive luxuries, but they need more unusual enjoyment, so Armani's mobile phones and luxury hotels become another manifestation of enhancing brand value.

There are different stages in one's life, and of course, we need to reproduce. So is the brand. So Armani did not give up the brand value that it had already owned, but wanted to make full use of it and create new value increments. In short, Armani's successful brand extension led to a spiralling rise in brand sales and brand output.

Deficiency

Armani has enjoyed a high degree of international recognition through the more than thirty years of its huge fashion empire. Many brands also bring brand assets to the same level while bringing in rolling sales. However, the long brand line, the large number of brands and the negative impact of popularity caused many counterfeit products, which made the core value of the brand hit. Therefore, while strengthening the management of supply chain and terminal, brand needs to find another way to find new commercial value different from the current market.