Advertising: Fall Campaigns, With an Eye on Holiday Sales

Fall Campaigns, With an Eye on Holiday Sales

A 1986 Kenneth Cole ad, promoting the American Foundation for AIDS Research, will be included in an advertising archive to be featured online.

HOW concerned is Madison Avenue about the mood of consumers as the crucial fall and Christmas shopping seasons near? Well, one sign of the uncertain times is that Kmart and the Draftfcb agency have already started running a commercial promoting Kmart’s holiday layaway program â€" more than a hundred days before Christmas.

Among the apparel brands introducing campaigns for the fall is Lilly Pulitzer.

“People are feeling a little better off, but they’re very cautious, very careful,” said Kenneth Cole, the apparel designer whose Kenneth Cole Productions sells clothing and footwear.

For those like Mr. Cole who market nondurable goods, there is less money to go around as millions of consumers buy cars, new homes and furniture. And data shows Americans are using credit cards to meet more urgent needs rather than make discretionary purchases. That means working harder to divine just what will motivate consumers to become customers.

“When we give them what they want, they’re there,” Mr. Cole said of shoppers. “You have to offer them something different, a creative alternative.”

One way Mr. Cole’s company will try doing that is through a special Web site, 30yearsbold.com, that is to go live on Thursday, offering a searchable, shareable archive of Kenneth Cole brand advertising that was created internally and by the Kirshenbaum & Bond agency. The budget for the initiative, said Amy Choyne, chief marketing officer, is estimated at $1 million.

There will also be a book, “This Is a Kenneth Cole Production,” to be published by Rizzoli, written by Mr. Cole and Lisa Birnbach. The book will cover Mr. Cole’s social activism, which is expressed through his advertising, along with a retrospective of the campaigns.

For the Lucy line of women’s activewear sold by the VF Corporation, a similar desire to reach consumers in “unexpected, nontraditional” fashion led to a decision to pass “at this point in our brand’s life” on conventional advertising like commercials or print ads, said Laurie Etheridge, president for Lucy.

Rather, there are plans for an installation on the Charles River Esplanade in Boston that Ms. Etheridge and Dawn Dzedzy, director for brand marketing, are calling a “light forest,” after its more than 10,000 solar-powered LED lights. People will be able to visit the project from Oct. 3 through 13, Ms. Dzedzy said, “and we’d love to take it to other cities.

“It’s an opportunity to connect with consumers,” she added, “to show who we are rather than tell.”

The project, developed by the Mono agency in Minneapolis, part of MDC Partners, is estimated to cost under $2 million. It is an example of experiential marketing, which seeks to give brands a tangible presence outside of stores. The idea behind the installation is to provide women with “opportunities to refresh and ‘de-stress,’ ” Ms. Etheridge said.

Ms. Dzedzy put it this way: “It’s giving women an amazing moment. This doesn’t say, ‘Here’s a light forest; go buy some yoga pants.’ “

Jane Schoenborn, vice president for creative communications at Lilly Pulitzer, the women’s apparel company, agreed that it was increasingly critical to stand out amid a sea of sameness. “Because of our resort-chic brand positioning, we are filling a different niche,” Ms. Schoenborn said of the distinctive style created by Lilly Pulitzer, known as the Palm Beach princess of prints.

Even so, “we’re careful with our price points so we don’t make it hard to buy,” she added. “When our consumer sees the garment, and sees the price tag, she is delighted with what she sees, the perceived value. And when we delight her, she pulls the trigger and purchases with us.”

Lilly Pulitzer is introducing a campaign â€" in a collaboration between an internal team and Agency Magma in New York â€" that illustrates a theme of “Life in print.” The campaign, with a budget estimated at more than $2.2 million, will be in digital media, which is “becoming the new voice for the brand,” Ms. Schoenborn said, because “we’re finding our consumer loves to talk to us online.”

Crocs, the shoe brand, is also concentrating on digital platforms for a coming campaign, which includes the crocs.com Web site and social media such as Twitter. The effort, mostly created internally, is centered on a lighthearted self-proclamation that designates Sept. 28 as “International Comfort Day,” in a nod to the brand’s promise of comfortable footwear.

“It’s a message we can own as a brand,” said Andy Sackmann, chief marketing officer at Crocs Inc., of providing “fun things to engage people.”

At the same time, reflecting the recent difficulties Crocs has had in the United States market, the campaign will offer “incentives to get people in store,” he added, like a 20 percent discount.

The goal is “to turn this into a true business-driven initiative and not just a P.R. activity,” Mr. Sackmann said. “We want to tell a brand story and tell a product-awareness story.”