Douglas Mandel, designer of Montreal’s kamkyl line of men’s clothing, wasn’t necessarily looking for a sponsorship partner when he paired up with Hotel Gault.
When the Montreal boutique hotel approached him about designing its new staff uniforms, he offered up his services. But the partnership didn’t stop there: within a few months, Hotel Gault gave Mandel a ticket to New York’s fashion week, ‘7th on 6th,’ to show his latest collection to an international audience of sought-after fashion media and buyers.
The kamkyl brand was front and centre, but the Hotel Gault was also present – right down to the plastic-hotel-key-card invitations which were sent out to hundreds of fashion media and buyers.
This type of interaction – getting its brands in the hands of the über-hip – is every marketer’s dream. And what better way to make the link than by teaming up with Canada’s fashion elite to bolster your brand’s status. In the past, the words ‘Canada,’ ‘fashion’ and ‘elite’ did not seem to go hand-in-hand. But that’s changing, with more exposure to industry events like fashion weeks held in Toronto and Montreal.
Three years ago Toronto Fashion Week garnered support from high-end retailer Holt Renfrew and Chum’s FashionTelevision (which covers the event for both the FashionTelevision Channel and FashionTelevision the show), along with about 10 others.
The latest Fashion Week, held March 18 to 21, had about 50 sponsors, with about 15 to 20 of them in serious promotional mode. The cost to brands ranges between $10,000 and $1 million.
The increase in interest indicates marketers are starting to leverage the clout of elegance held by these events and by individual Canadian fashion designers. Media coverage and access to an affluent, trendsetting target demo are just some of the benefits to brands getting involved in these partnerships.
Says Christina Gliha, CD at Toronto-based brand consultancy Spencer Francey Peters: ‘It’s about the cachet fashion brings, and the edgy, artistic component. [And it gets] a great amount of media attention.’
For Montreal’s kamkyl and the Hotel Gault, Mandel says the partnership is a way to leverage the prestige each brand offers, particularly since both are trying to reach the same target audience of design-appreciative 30- and 40-somethings.
However, he says the association also allowed kamkyl exposure to the hotel’s direct clients and media from leisure and travel magazines. ‘These are people we wouldn’t have had on our list,’ says Mandel. ‘They probably wouldn’t have come because of the fashion.’
Mariette Parent, associate GM of Hotel Gault, says that sponsoring kamkyl at ‘7th on 6th’ was a great way to reach New York consumers, since they get many guests from that area.
Parent says it’s too early to tell whether the partnership has garnered results, however, she says its Web site – which was promoted on the ‘7th on 6th’ invite – has been experiencing heavy traffic. Hotelgault.com has a contest browsers can enter to win a free night’s stay. Parent says the company has accumulated the names and addresses of about 300 people from the contest thus far.
Currently in Canada, the biggest fashion event to gain brand sponsorship is Toronto Fashion Week, organized by the Fashion Design Council of Canada (FDCC). ‘It reaches the consumer in a fresh way,’ says Robin Kay, FDCC president. ‘Immediately, that’s a hook and a hit.’
Every year, Toronto Fashion Weeks held in the spring and fall attract about 20,000 guests, including media and fashion buyers from across Canada, U.S. and Europe. This March alone, there were 300 registered members of the media, all of whom were equipped with L’Oréal logo’d gift bags filled with sponsors’ goodies, including Puma T-shirts, Stella Artois beer glasses and L’Oréal cosmetics, among other swag.
According to Kay, the FDCC’s mandate is to ‘create a cohesive fashion industry in Canada’ that is on par with cities like New York, Paris and Milan. But with little money, and a low profile for the designers, Kay says sponsorship is critical to creating a world-class event. The hard costs of staging the one-week event are about $200,000, coupled with about $300,000 for marketing and related events.
One of the main draws for sponsor brands, says Kay, is that ‘not only does it reach the consumer, it reaches the decision-makers.’ And it’s those industry decision-makers that help to make or break a brand.
‘People in the industry have a lot of opinions,’ says Kay. ‘They’re a high-profile, intense group.’
Adds kamkyl’s Douglas Mandel, ‘At a fashion show, you have an opportunity to reach at least 200 press people. It’s quick, captive time.’
Montreal-based L’Oréal Canada, owner of consumer brand L’Oréal Paris and salon brand L’Oréal Professionnel, has been title sponsor of Toronto Fashion Week for the last two years (L’Oréal Professionnel last year, L’Oréal Paris this year). In fact, the most recent event was titled ‘L’Oréal Paris presents Toronto Fashion Week.’ As sponsor heavyweight, it provides financial and in-kind investment to Toronto Fashion Week. Both lines – Paris and Professionnel – have taken care of make-up and hair for the shows for the last two years.
‘We’re a brand that has international expertise in hair colour, skin care and cosmetics,’ says Ron Szekely, director of marketing for L’Oréal Paris Canada. ‘What we’ve brought to [Toronto Fashion Week] is not just a cheque, but our design team, art direction in terms of make-up and hair, as well as media exposure for the event itself.’
Szekely says L’Oréal has worked this year at driving media coverage to ultimately get consumers – and not just the industry – aware of the event. ‘Most of our efforts are to reach people who would never even think of coming to the event – those who may read about it in the newspaper so they can get a feel of the glamour of [Toronto Fashion Week].’
L’Oréal’s goal this year, says Szekely, was to get $1 million worth of media coverage. To make that happen, the company worked with the FDCC to ensure that more media attended the event, and that when they were there, that they felt comfortable in a media lounge with comfy couches and food buffet.
American fashion journalists from online magazines such as Fashion Wire Daily and Hint magazine added a dose of international clout.
A further way that L’Oréal is leveraging the glamour quotient to reach the consumer is via an online contest to attend the upcoming Toronto Fashion Week this September. Promoted online through women’s magazines like Flare, the contest raises awareness for both Toronto Fashion Week and for L’Oréal’s product line, says Szekely, and brings that partnership directly to the consumer.
Meanwhile, Toronto Fashion Week also had its first American sponsor this year in Dallas-based Samsung, maker of wireless telephones. Samsung was there promoting its new a220 phone which is targeted at female trendsetters and designed to look like a cosmetics compact.
In aligning themselves with fashion, says Kay, brands also get to be on-side with other brands that fit their positioning. Kay says she cultivates sponsorship partnerships with brands that make good bedfellows.
‘With the sponsor mix I’ve developed, sponsors can benefit from each other,’ says Kay, who adds, ‘Stella Artois wants very much to mingle with Mercedes Benz. If certain brands negated those kinds of relationships, it wouldn’t be something I’d want to get involved in.’
Spencer Francey’s Gliha says it’s important to consider whether a sponsorship association produces a better product in the end. ‘Do the two companies benefit and does the consumer benefit? Ultimately, the total result [should be] better than the sum of its parts.’ She says L’Oréal’s sponsorship initiatives make sense because ‘beauty and fashion go hand in hand. It’s a seamless association.’
Nestle Canada believes its Aero brand fits with fashion; it recently sponsored Toronto-based fashion designer Janet T. Planet for her show during Toronto Fashion Week. Aero provided sample chocolate for media and other guests and its logo was emblazoned at the head of the runway.
Says Nestle’s Ken Shaver, leader of confectionery marketing: ‘Because Aero is targeted to females, it just made tremendous sense. Aero and Janet are always reinventing themselves.’
He points out that over the last few years, the Aero brand has undergone makeovers in its packaging and product. Shaver adds: ‘It’s a great fit with the Aero positioning.’ (For more, see ‘Some sponsorships leave a not-so-sweet taste in the mouth,’ below).
Meanwhile, Mercedes Benz Canada signed on for a long-term commitment with both the Toronto and Montreal fashion weeks.
Mercedes is known for its worldwide strategy of aligning with fashion – it has been a sponsor for both the New York and Sydney fashion weeks. JoAnne Caza, director of marketing and PR for Mercedes Benz Canada, says the fashion association made sense because ‘the design and fluidity, and the way the cars are conceived are in line with how fashion is designed.’
Further, Caza notes, the involvement enables the brand to ‘say that we’re into fashion and we’re cool and hip and we’re interested in talking to you as somebody on that same level.’
Some of the initiatives involving the brand during the most recent fashion week in Toronto included the use of the cars as shuttles for VIP guests and designers to and from events. As well, the cars, with Toronto Fashion Week decals on them, were lined up outside events such as a breakfast for media at Holt Renfrew.
Caza says the demographics for Mercedes Benz are skewing increasingly younger and more female, but that it has also broadened over the last several years. The brand caters to 20- to 60-year-olds and the cars range in price from $34,000 to $200,000. Caza says the link to fashion offers another way of reaching a more diverse clientele.
Chris Campbell, CD of Toronto-based ad agency Interbrand, says trendsetters can be a tough audience and these sponsorships are a good way to reach them. ‘The more touchpoints you have with them the better. [And] reaching them at a touchpoint is in some ways more effective than mass marketing.’
In particular, he says Mercedes’ strategy is effective. ‘The brand is associated with style, beauty and luxury. These are things you associate with the fashion industry,’ he says. ‘I don’t think there’s any immediate return on investment. You have to commit to it, and over time, you start to associate the brand with the [fashion] industry.’
Some sponsorships leave a not-so-sweet taste in the mouth
Models draped in dresses made of Aero chocolate bar wrappers milled about before the ‘Aero presents Janet T. Planet’ fashion show during Toronto Fashion Week.
They served up platters of chocolate to the hundreds of Moet & Chandon champagne-swilling fashionistas at Toronto’s Liberty Grand. (The bubbly maker cosponsored the event, as it was deemed a good fit with Aero’s bubbly bar.)
Once inside, the media found their seats lined with gift bags filled with mini Aero bars and press info about the show, themed Undergrowth.
A huge Aero logo emblazoned the head of the runway as the show proceeded and the models did their thing, dressed in the designer’s latest collection, their faces airbrushed with telltale bubbles. At the end, they paraded down the runway, holding Aero bars. They unwrapped them, and ate them up, amidst smiles of delight.
‘What does chocolate have to do with fashion?’ read a press release. What indeed?
Says Christina Gliha, CD at Toronto branding and design firm Spencer Francey Peters, ‘When you have two [brands] coming together like that, people are going to question the association. Fashion with chocolate – I don’t know that it makes much sense.’
But according to packaged goods company Nestle, Aero and fashion make good bedfellows because they’re both made in Canada and women love them.
Nestle’s Ken Shaver says the show turnout was immense. ‘The response was unbelievable. Typically, opening night [of Fashion Week] doesn’t draw well. Janet made a huge impact.’
He adds that the partnership ‘absolutely generates attention. [Aero is a] prominent brand in Canada and we’re helping a relatively new designer make a mark in Canada. The two obviously benefit from one another.’
