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Kenzo

Positioning Kenzo for the future

Situation

The fashion house, Kenzo, started in 1970 as Jungle Jap. In 1993, Kenzo joined the LVMH Group. 1999, Kenzo marked its 30th anniversary and the retirement of its Artistic Director Kenzo Takada. Since July 2011 the new Creative Directors, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon, the duo behind Opening Ceremony, have injected a new energy into Kenzo. They operated a shift towards a younger and more international target. Identifying this new buzz as a great opportunity and upwardly revising their ambitions, Kenzo’s management team decided to challenge the brand’s leading concept and re-define the overall positioning.

Tasks

In order to define and challenge the overall leading concept and positioning of Kenzo, we needed to determine Kenzo’s new reference market. A critical task was to understand who is Kenzo’s new target audience. We also needed to provide a detailed competitive communication audit and analysis to help define Kenzo’s new communication strategy.

Actions

We first analysed the origins of the brand and interviewed key stakeholders as well as industry experts to draw up key learnings and insights. We carried out field visits to key Kenzo stores and most dynamic fashion retail formats around the world. In order to define Kenzo’s new positioning and communication strategy, we analysed competitive communication mix of leading contemporary brands. We also determined customer-based clusters and analysed their specific characteristics and needs.

Results

We defined Kenzo’s global positioning targeted to new customer segments, based on a new central idea: “Play with Style“. We were then asked to bring the new brand essence to life around the world and to define innovative and playful tools to activate and monitor the new brand positioning. Our work contributed in turning Kenzo into one of the hottest brands in the fashion sector, growing at an unprecedented pace, multiplying its sales by 3 over the past 5 years. In 2018, the new managing team reiterated its trust in our consultancy asking us to reinforce its positioning and storytelling in an ever-changing fashion world.

Insights

Market dynamics
Customer understanding
Competitive analysis
Brand audit
Best practices

Strategy

Brand fundamentals
Positioning options
Leading concept
Implications & gaps

Implementation

Brand book & guidelines
Marketing strategies
Activation platforms
Communication strategies
Client journey & touchpoints

Monitoring

KPIs definition
Client experience measurement
Learnings & insights

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#brandessence
#brandstrategy
#brandplatform
#competitiveanalysis
#marketingstrategy
#fashionmarketing
#customeranalysis
#customersegmentation
#growthstrategy

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