For the past 81 years, the Chanel name has carried a special resonance for women 30 and older, who have made Chanel No. 5 the world's leading fragrance. But the younger market has proved elusive for Chanel, a state of affairs it intends to change with the introduction of its latest fragrance appealing to 20-somethings.
Chanel's name for the new fragrance -- Chance -- is fitting. To capture the fancy of this fickle young group of women between the ages of 18 and 29, Chanel is giving Chance the biggest marketing push in the company's history -- with an introductory budget estimated at more than US$12 million. Chanel is flinging itself into a market already crowded by competitors' earlier entrants, like Happy by Clinique and CK One from Calvin Klein.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
Chanel's aggressive plans are self-explanatory, according to industry observers. "Young consumers are the lifeblood of the beauty industry," said Irma Zandl, president of the Zandl Group in New York, a consulting company that specializes in the under-30 age category. She added that, "A brand not recruiting teens or young adults is just getting old."
Over the last six years, Chanel has gradually made inroads into the younger consumer market. In 1996, the company introduced Allure, marketed to women in their late 20s and 30s. Coco Mademoiselle soon followed, and its target market was women 25 and up.
"So, it's not something that, you know, we just woke up one day and said `Oh, uh-oh, No. 5 customers are aging, we better go find a younger consumer,'" said Laurie Palma, senior vice president for fragrance and Internet marketing at Chanel Inc. in New York.
But neither Allure nor Coco Mademoiselle have made great inroads into the 18 to 34 market, which represents a third of the US$2 billion women's fragrance market. According to a 2001 Women's Fragrance Track Consumer Study by NPD BeautyTrends in Port Washington, New York, which tracks the beauty industry, the leading brands owned and used most often by women 18-to-34 years old include: Happy by Clinique, which had overall sales of US$101 million in 2001; Romance by Ralph Lauren, at US$63 million; Tommy Girl by Tommy Hilfiger, at US$42 million; Victoria's Secret Divine (which is not tracked by NPD, but has annual sales estimated at US$40 million); Lancaster Cool Water Woman at US$30 million; Calvin Klein's Obsession at US$27 million; and CK One at US$20 million.
Arie L. Kopelman, president and chief operating officer at Chanel Inc, the US unit of the French couture house Chanel, is confident that Chance will be among the top tier of this group. He predicts that "in the short term," Chance will be "as big as Chanel No. 5."
Domestic sales for No. 5 were US$50 million in 2001, putting it in sixth place among all fragrances, according to NPD.
Chanel has given Chance a light, fresh, floral scent, which Palma said is meant to convey a youthful, sexy and romantic attitude.
To differentiate it from all other square-shaped Chanel fragrances that are packaged in black and white or beige, the Chance bottle is circular and packaged in pink. The scent, with an entry price point of US$38.50, will be available in domestic department stores later this month and in other countries next spring.
The ads, created by an in-house team and photographed by Jean-Paul Goude, also try to differentiate Chance from some of the other successful fragrances geared to 20-somethings. The print ad features a 16-year-old Russian model, Anne Vyalitsyna, dressed in a gown, clinging to the enormous bottle, embracing "her chance." The tag line reads, "The unexpected new Chanel fragrance."
"I don't think Chanel in bluejeans would be interesting," Palma said. "That's Tommy or Ralph, which they have already."
The television commercial, shot in Venice, Italy, is set to the tune "Taking a Chance on Love" and shows a young couple doing just that.
Chance will also have a major Internet program within the Chanel Web site, scented impressions in magazines and extensive sampling efforts, including rollerball mini-bottles in targeted areas like college campuses.
"We have tried to make Chance modern and young and do all the things that we needed to do for this generation, but still keep it grounded, rooted in what Chanel is all about." He added, "And you can have your cake and eat it in this situation. They are not mutually exclusive."
The marketing effort could turn off some of Chanel's core audience, warned Clive Chajet, a corporate identity and brand consultant. If Chance is for the young, then "all other Chanel fragrances are for older women only. And if you're not using their younger fragrance, then you're old."
But, in the end, Zandl said, "It's all about the juice. The advertising can bring them to the fragrance bar where they're going to test it, but then it's the juice itself is what makes the sale."
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS