Collaboration and Independence - Self Positioning Academic Essay

Jason Keir Melissos

MAIM2: Collaboration and Independence

Self Positioning

4783 words

Monday, 21st May 2012

Introduction

        The endeavor of this essay is to outline my interest in the fashion industry and more precisely to examine the ways fashion brand managers respond to change through innovation management with a mission to maintain and develop a brand’s strong identity and image.

The fashion industry - like any other industry - has always had to deal with change. ‘Few markets are stable and four main factors create the need for innovation: technological advances, changing customers, intensified competition and changing business environment’ (Goffin, K. & Mitchell, R., 2010, p.2). Fashion brands and companies identify more and more the need to adapt to change and to innovate, while maintaining their strong identity and image. For instance, on its website, the LVMH group manifests towards its companies’ employees to aim for product excellence, to bolster the image of their brands with passionate determination, to act as entrepreneurs, to strive to be the best in all they do and last but not least, to be creative and innovative. Similarly, the PPR’s (Gucci group) business strategy is forward-looking, seizing new opportunities and relying on innovation and change.

        ‘… Brands are identities-in-action that allow stability to be maintained while simultaneously enabling change’ (Kornberger, M., 2010, p.87). A strong identity though does not guarantee success over the long run. A strong brand image is also required. As Martin Kornberger states in Brand Society:

Dutton and Dukerich argue that identity is dependent on image. For them, identity is what members believe the character of the organization is. Image, on the other hand, is what other people outside think the organization’s characteristics are (Kornberger, M., 2010, p.111).

In this case, the outsiders are the stakeholders of which the most important are the consumers/customers. A customer’s opinion has a dominant role in the fashion industry. ‘Creating a positive consumer opinion is essential to facilitating consumer sales. Public relations is, therefore an extremely important management tool that can drastically affect the longevity and future of the company’ (Sherman, J.G, Periman, S.S, 2010, p.3).

        In the first part of this written discourse, arguments from a selection of texts that are relevant to the issue of fashion brand and innovation management will critically be observed, examined and analyzed.

Further to this, the second part of this article (case studies) will delve into essential examples and different successful and non-successful cases of key fashion brand practitioners that have already taken place and that are of a relevance to the action of brand and innovation management through the attempt of nurturing their identity and image in the field of change, while trying to get ahead.

Finally, the last part will be where I will conclusively be situating myself, strategically, within the theoretical and practical areas mapped in this paper. This is where I will be describing what my strategy is for entering the area of brand management and public relations upon graduation.

Theoretical map (Literature Review)

        Fashion is without a doubt related to change. Fashion apart from fostering change every season, has to react also to change internally and externally. A successful brand manager with a mission towards innovation, apart from setting, through the company, trends and dealing with the external aspects that affect the brand, is required to be able to increase general awareness that complex issues is not an entity’s affair but a collaborative work of its employees.

 In specific, fashion has delved deep into the lives of consumers. Fashion brands affect the way consumers think, act and live in both a direct and indirect way. In FASHION DESIGN: process, innovation & practice, Kathryn McKelvey and Janine Munslow, for example, state from a design perspective that:

The very word fashion signifies change. This pace of change shows no sign of halting and designers are under constant pressure to maintain their creative momentum. New developments in mass production and information technology have helped to increase this speed of change by decreasing the lead-time between design and finished stock entering the retail environment, quickly turning catwalk fashion into high street equivalents. Brands spread their influence constantly diversifying into new product areas. ( McKelvey, K., Munslow, J., 2003, p.1)

In the case of fashion having to react to change, an example can be seen in the book FASHION PUBLIC RELATIONS by Gerald J. Sherman & Sar S. Periman where the consumer plays a vital role:

The fashion industry is driven by wants as much as by needs. By definition, fashion always changes according to what’s in vogue. What’s in vogue is determined in great part by how the consumer views the fashion item. (Sherman, J.G, Periman, S.S, 2010, p.3)

A big importance from fashion brands is given to the product. ‘As far as innovation is concerned the reward is not the journey but the end product; this alone is the measure of judgment’ (Loschek, I., 2009, p.100). Innovation though, for the fashion industry, is more than a strong product and can occur in more than one levels and departments of a brand. In Managing Innovation Jane Henry and David Walker state that:

        By ‘manage innovation’ we mean the ability to trigger, generate control and steer new ideas through the maze. This is not merely the task of one brilliant manager but a task for teams which include those that generate and those that focus upon constraints, those that innovate and those that adapt: in short a balanced coalition between original thinkers and those that provide direction and stability. Unhappily there is antagonism between these camps and a widespread lack of respect for creative working. Without trust and mutual support few can operate across the multiple Berlin walls of the professions. (Henry, J., Walker, D., 1991, p. 4)

Another example of innovation not being a single person’s task can be seen in Understanding Design where Kees Dorst differentiates design processes to the innovation ones:

        The difficulty in these larger innovation processes is that, in contrast to design processes, which tend to take place within a design department or design agency, the different stages of the innovation process are done by different levels in the company hierarchy. (Dorst, K., 2006, p.156)

        Fashion brands, like any other brands, need to be able to control both internal and external environments. A brand manager is the ‘…physical interface between employees and consumers [and] the brand the intellectual, social and cultural medium connecting inside and outside (Kornberger, M., 2010, p.145).

        Every single change (customers, technology, culture, workforce etc.) creates conditions for change and the need for innovative brand management. A strong fashion brand needs to be both adaptable and flexible. Martin Kornberger in Brand Society, using statements from Baudrillard and Askegaard, explains how brands and brand managers shape the connective axis between the inside and outside:

Every connection also marks a difference. Brands represent a system that Baudrillard described as ‘industrial production of differences’: every little aberration, alteration and anomaly is consumed by brand strategists in their conquest for unique and attention-catching brands. In the words of Askegaard, brands are a hegemonic vehicle for endless diversity. (Kornberger, M., 2010, p.22)

The fashion industry is not autarkic.  We understand that fashion is complex, develops an interchange with the environment and that a successful brand manager must pursue creative approaches in order to increase performance. Ingrid Loschek in the book WHEN CLOTHES BECOME FASHION: Design and Innovation Systems states:

Fashion as a system does not lead to the assimilation of the environment, but to a structural linkage, for example with other systems such as economics, politics, mass media…This structural linkage is crucial to a reflection of the zeitgeist in fashion. The environment or other systems have a supportive and also a blocking or neutralizing impact on fashion.  (Loschek, I., 2009, p.22)

‘For this reason, fashion is dynamic, open to innovation and less socially isolating’ (Loschek, I., 2009, p.22).

The competition and the continuous changes within the fashion industry that create the need for innovation, call ‘for two essential tools of brand management: “brand identity”, specifying the facets of brands’ uniqueness and value, and ‘brand positioning’, the main difference creating preference in a specific market at a specific time for its products’ (Kapferer, J., N., 2012, p.149). ‘Positioning a brand means emphasizing the distinctive characteristics that make it different from its competitors and appealing to the public’ (Kapferer, J., N., 2012, p.152). A strong brand image, through public relations, is the tool that assists this.