This was just too good to wait until I came back from vacation, combining my love of signaling and unadulterated hatred of all things Jersey Shore (the show, not the location):
Allegedly, the anxious folks at these various luxury houses are all aggressively gifting our gal Snookums with free bags. No surprise, right? But here’s the shocker: They are not sending her their own bags. They are sending her each other’s bags! Competitors‘ bags!
Call it what you will — “preemptive product placement”? “unbranding”? — either way, it’s brilliant, and it makes total sense. As much as one might adore Miss Snickerdoodle, her ability to inspire dress-alikes among her fans is questionable. The bottom line? Nobody in fashion wants to co-brand with Snooki.
Read the full story here. Hat tip Marginal Revolution. This is awesome on so many levels.
Essentially, luxury brand marketers are engaging in a sort of counter-signaling campaign. Rather than signaling the exclusivity and virtue of their brand through the conspicuous consumption of their products by admirable celebrities, these operatives are tying their competitors’ products to an undesirable celebrity in an attempt to downgrade the status of those products. Genius.
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: | applied signaling, Brands, market signals, signals
So genius. As a marketer, this is one of those things you read and I “gah I wish I had thought of that!”
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