Paul Anderson is director of marketing at Soffe Apparel,
an apparel company started in 1949 as a distributor to the military.
Over the years, the company expanded into clothing and became known for
its signature athletic shorts. The shorts, made for men, became popular among cheerleaders, who would fold down the band so they'd fit properly.
In the fall of 2014, Soffe conducted market research into the young,
female market for athletic apparel that yielded some interesting
insights. Soffe learned that women felt more motivated to work out as
part of a group, and that that sense of belonging was key to success
when pursuing their fitness goals.
I invited Paul to Marketing Smarts to discuss how Soffe used those
insights to completely rebrand the company to reach the underserved
demographic of young, female athletes seeking inspiration and motivation
from one another.
Soffe's "Strength in Us" campaign is a complete turnaround from the
brand's previous marketing message. The company's willingness to act on
sound audience data has turned its social channels into a destination of
choice for its target audience.
Here are just a few highlights from our conversation:
Don't be afraid to rebrand if you're not reaching your core audience
(03:23): "The Soffe brand has been going through a massive revamp over
the past 18 months.... We noticed especially on the women's side that
there was this massive disconnect with our core consumers. So, one of
the things we wanted to do...was to go out and actually listen to that
consumer. That really prompted [us to conduct] research."
Invest in research so you can truly understand your audience
(04:00): "One of the big things we did was to bring on a new agency of
record...and they've got some pretty interesting proprietary tools at
their disposal [that] allowed us to set the stage for the research that
we did. Being able to, at scale, understand and listen on social and
through search, we were able to get an idea of brand sentiment.... That
then prompted us to dig into the specifics around our core consumer....
Young women were connecting through exercise and these group-based
activities.... 80% of young women said they were more motivated to
exercise with friends or a team. 92% said they were more powerful as a
group... It wasn't that they weren't competitive—they were individually
competitive—they just felt that there was something more."
Look for opportunities to connect with audiences your competition is ignoring
(05:35): "As we looked at the activewear market in general, we saw a
big opportunity there to tell our story, a story that had been part of
Soffe for a long time: our roots in the military, our roots in
cheerleading, and then how that evolved to how...young women approach
active now.... We're a smaller 'fighter brand' as I like to say, but as
you look at the big guys that are out there, it's all a lot of the
same—advertises and talks about 'lone individuals' with big campaign
slogans glorifying the single athlete. We thought that this was an
interesting thing that we'd want to hang our hat on, and talk to our
core consumer and young women in a more realistic and authentic way."
Once you've reviewed the data, use it to better serve your target audience (07:41):
"We
did some early segmentation work and really looked at the different
groups around dance culture, around gymnastics culture, Zumba and cardio
barre—all these sort of new exercise movements that really are based
around groups, and they all sort of draft off of dance in a lot of ways.
We're really concentrating on messaging around those activity bases
where we're building product and merchandizing around those things. It
started with segmentation."
Go where your audience is (like Instagram) and give them content that inspires (08:53):
"What
we wanted to do as we launched for spring 2015 was to put a break
between the brand's old and new content. We wanted to be pretty stark
about it. To launch the 'Strength is in Us' campaign, we released a
24-word manifesto in 24 separate posts, and each post featured
compelling statistics around our study, and it really just
captivated—the statistics around teamwork, around the power of
collective strength. It was interesting to see our consumer who was used
to our 'old' content, and then seeing the reaction from our new 'coming
out' party.... It's just about being a content source for our consumer
and really to inspire and motivate young women around this idea of 'the
power of we' and 'the strength is in us....' We were on Instagram
before, but we're being more strategic and more channel specific about
it. It is our most engaged channel."
Experiment, but not without a strategy; establish a baseline to measure against
(12:18): "We can see Likes, comments; and as our audience grows, those
things are all important. One of the things...we had seen through our
initial research around the brand was digging down and understanding
brand sentiment...and we're going to be paying attention, obviously, to
that. We wanted to be a place to host the conversation around our
positioning, sort of a content source of inspiration and motivation....
We want to be a brand publishing content that engages our consumer. It's
one thing that we just didn't do when we lost touch with them.... We've
established a brand-tracker base that we're going to use to measure
yourself against quarterly, so that'll be really interesting to see
where the needle moves there.... We have seen our followers increase at a
rate that was higher than what we were previously doing, so that's a
good sign."
To learn more, visit Soffe.com or follow Soffe on Twitter: @Soffe. And be sure to check out its Instagram feed: @soffegirl.
Paul and I talked about much more, so be sure to listen to the entire
show, which you can do above, or download the mp3 and listen at your
convenience. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts
podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode!
This episode brought to you by CallidusCloud.
Special thanks to production sponsor Candidio
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an efficient, affordable video production platform allowing marketers
and communicators to collaborate and curate video content, with help
from a team of professional, on-demand video editors for the finishing
touches. Check them out!
Show opener music credit: Noam Weinstein.
This marketing podcast was created and published by MarketingProfs.
Kerry O'Shea Gorgone
is instructional design manager, enterprise training, at
MarketingProfs. She's also a speaker, writer, attorney, and educator.
She hosts and produces the weekly Marketing Smarts podcast. To contact Kerry about being a guest on Marketing Smarts, send her an email, or you can find her on Twitter (@KerryGorgone), Google+, and her personal blog.
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