Ch. 7 - Business Marketing

Submitting Product Feeds 

Retailers that sell products online should most definitely be using product feeds to reach a broader audience. A product feed is simply a file generated from Tommy Hilfiger that lists product details such as photos, descriptions, pricing and even specials. These product feeds can be submitted to shopping comparison websites, search engines and also made available to customers using feed readers.

 

Creating Newsletters

Newsletter and email marketing is key in keeping in touch with the customers we've manage to get in Tommy Hilfiger. It takes a lot of work to gain a customer. Why let them leave without offering a way to stay in contact?

 Joining Social Networks

Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn may or may help  sell products but if that's where our customers hang out, maybe we should too. The blogs on these sites helps us keep in touch with shoppers, make announcements or feature new merchandise and promotions.

Ch. 8 - Segmenting and Targeting Markets

The purpose of marketing is to understand the customer and then be an integral part of the organization in using this understanding to maximize the companies sale's profits and markets. Companies create market managers who are responsible for understanding certain segments. When looking for target markets good questions like

Why do customers buy from us and not our competitor? 

How often do they shop for the type of products or services we sell? 

Do they prefer to buy online or in a physical store? 

How price tolerant are they? 

Are our products “must have” or simply “nice to have"? 

The questions help determine our marketing and sales strategies. 

Market Segmentation and Targeting 

Before we seek to understand our customers, we start with knowing the overall size of the market for the products we are selling. It helps identify our real target customer if we look at the total market. 

The next step is segment the market into similar buying groups. Look at submarkets by age, income, gender, location, or any number of other approaches. It may be difficult to acquire customers in any of those market segments if we try to attract all customers with online promotion or product line. 

The goal with market segmentation is to group potential buyers into a segment that is likely to have similar buying tastes and habits. Even that can be challenging. But there is a lot of free information on the Internet. We also evaluate competitive sites already selling into those markets by analyzing their demographics, traffic, and the types of search marketing strategies that they employ. 

Once we have identified discrete market segments, we selected one or more target markets to pursue. This process includes understanding what products those consumers are seeking, how they will shop, how much they are willing to pay, and so forth. 

Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Part of developing and managing your companies products is trying to innovate the next big thing. Tommy Hilfiger is testing innovative waters using a BT videoconferencing solution to help design their new garments. These Virtual fitting rooms located in Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo enable designers to communicate and collaborate as they work on new garments and apparel.

The virtual fittings rooms contain mobile cameras and recording facilities to enable the design team based in Amsterdam and New York to collaborate faster and more effectively with the manufacturing team in Hong Kong.By using the technology designers will be able to discuss the development of every single piece of the collection ‘face-to-face’ without having to take long-distance flights to meet up in person.

“We were impressed by BT's knowledge and experience in the videoconferencing area. This, combined with the creative, innovative solution which the BT-Cisco team offered, made the decision easy,” said Fred Gehring, chief executive officer, Tommy Hilfiger Group.

“The solution will bring us an immerse virtual meeting experience and save both time and money. Teams will be able to interact and collaborate as if they were in the same room, making us much more agile and competitive. We look forward to better and more regular communication between our entities across the globe,” he said. 

Ch. 18 -Social Media and Marketing

The best marketing strategy in the world fail if the company is unable to get the right message to their potential customers at the right moment. An integrated marketing communications plan is customized by the available budget of time and money to the most effective means for distributing the companies message. No matter how great the product or service, if the potential customers doesn't' know it exists, there will never be an expansion of market or increase in sales. That is why an integrated marketing communications plan has all parts of its tactics working together so that when in contact with the consumer/customer they remember the company when ready to buy. 

                                                                   Marketing Methods

Web site: web site talks about the company. It is informative, easy to use, e-commerce ready. The web site is available at all times, it is ready to speak for your company. 

Advertising: print, online and radio. Choose the advertising medium that gets the message to the target audience where they are likely to be ready to receive it. Use a consistent, repetitive approach to build awareness and recall. 

Marketing Collateral: brochures, case studies, white papers. Materials build and define our brand and provide the customer with an important look at our positioning and messages.

Online Marketing: advertising, opt-in email marketing and links from other sites. Customers are online and we use the appropriate methods to reach and retain them. 

Direct mail, personal selling, networking and many more methods allow your company to get the message to the customer.

Ch. 10 - Product Concepts

Tommy Hilfiger is a brand which originated from a controversial billboard created by George Lois which sparked the attention of millions of Americans. The Branding of Tommy Hilfiger can be deemed successful because of its ability to distinguish it from any other product in the market. Its logo which is the most iconic part of the brand (other then its owner Tommy Hilfiger) contains white and red fields in the central part of the logo which were borrowed from the "International Code of Signals" flag "H" ("Hotel"), which when hoisted alone, means that: "I have a pilot on board." Here, of course, it is the "H" for "Hilfiger". The three major purposes of branding are product identification, repeat sales and new-product sales. When branding becomes successful enough the brand equity (value of the company begins to rise). In the case of Tommy Hilfiger the brand equity of his company allowed him to sell his company for over 3 billion dollars to clothing conglomerate Phillips-Van Heusen.  The price was nearly seven times what Phillips-Van Heusen paid for Calvin Klein in 2003 and nearly five times what LVMH paid for Donna Karan in 2001.

Ch. 17 - Personal Selling and Sales Management

The Tommy Hilfiger brand is one that can be found in department stores, wholesale stores and stores in between. Prices for their products vary on the seller, making it available to a wide segment of the market. Tommy Hilfiger does not manufacture its product and sells its product to big target markets, while selling its lifestyle. The pricing, location of products and promotion strategy are used to keep their big target market. 

Tommy Hilfiger is a brand who's Relationship selling is highly associated with Sales follow-ups in the long term. From my personal experience Tommy Hilfiger has been a reliable brand that I have been using my entire life. Tommy Hilfiger products are long lasting and have a wide price range accommodating people of different social classes. Not only has Tommy Hilfiger been able to build long term relationships with customers but also maintain long term relationships with such a big target market.

Ch. 16 - Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Promotion

Tommy Hilfiger advertisements are commonly found in the form of print ads in magazines and billboards in major cities.When Tommy Hilfiger was just about to launch his Tommy Hilfiger brand and clothing line he approached advertising wizard George Lois. George Lois already had quite the resume before working with Tommy Hilfiger. His area of expertise in advertising stretched from creating the “I Want My MTV’ campaign for MTV, to creating winning campaigns for senators Jacob Javits and Robert F. Kennedy making him just the man for the job. George

knew that Tommy was looking for something big to launch his brand. The ad depicted a fill-in-the-blank style list with the names of the worlds most popular clothing designers Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis, and Calvin Klein. George suggested to the world that Tommy Hilfiger should be added to the list. Tommy was nearly mortified by the idea of the ad. Being that those people were legends to him, and as a up and comer in the business, he didn’t feel qualified to be listed amongst the ranks. Eventually Tommy ran the ad campaign, which included a billboard in Times Square. Tommy Hilfiger became a near overnight sensation, and he booked dozens of TV appearances worth millions in free advertising. I think this story gives us a look at one of the most important lessons in business and marketing. Sometimes you need to be a little bit uncomfortable.

Tommy Hilfiger spends over 20% of annual sales on advertising. The company advertises primarily in fashion and lifestyle publications for men and women. In 1997, Tommy Hilfiger decided to sponsor “If It Makes You Happy” tour by singer Sheryl Crow. After being deemed a huge success, the following year sponsors The Rolling Stones tour. In 2012 Tommy Hilfiger announced they will be the official sponsor of the Golf Club at Chelsea Piers through 2013. Also announcing Keegan Bradley, the 2011 PGA Championship winner and PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, as global ambassador for the Tommy Hilfiger Golf men’s collection and, in March, British golfer Melissa Reid was named the ambassador for the Tommy Hilfiger Golf women’s collection.