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Op also says it is “The Original California Lifestyle Brand.” When I realized that the brand on the swimsuit I bought at Walmart for the Panama Canal cruise comes from a familiar company, I felt, like, all mellow. Dude.
I closely non-resemble the brand demographic, representatives of which appear in the Op ad on this page. In fact, check out the Op brand site and you’ll see just how non-similar these happy youngsters are to moi.
That’s okay – there’s room for a lot of brands in the world. I’m just intrigued that Op is owned by Iconix Brands. The last time I wrote about one of this company’s brands, it was London Fog® trenchcoats.
This post’s about cool-dude-beachwear branding and I’m proud to have the chance to re-examine the brand-holder. Inconix bought the Op brand – Ocean Pacific – about four years ago for $54 million and has revived it rather nicely. But then, that’s what Iconix is famous for – being a licensing dynamo and all. The company has a whole bunch for great and busy retail marques, including the Joe Boxer®, Badgley Mischaka®, Mossimo® and Candie’s® brands – the current “Candie’s Girl” is Britney Spears.
The self-proclaimed Iconix biz-model is using licensing to generate predictable revenue streams (thanks to contractually guaranteed minimum royalty payments) combined with trendsetters in aggressive advertising and promotion. Good, bad or ugly, the beautiful people – Spears, Eva Longoria Parker, Madonna, etc. – do generate attention.
Iconix Brands also seems quite smart about keeping certain brands in strict channels and mindsets. Op is for Walmart. Mudd® apparel is available only at Kohl’s. Rocawear, per the website, “was established…off of the meteoric success of co-founder Shawn ‘Jay Z’ Carter…to fit the urban lifestyle and…street-savvy consumers.”
What happens in most all of the Iconix brand demographics hardly ever touches me and my life. And any suggestion that my Op swim trunks are too young for me will be met with knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud agreement.
For a marketer and advertiser, though, I applaud what Iconix Brands is doing at both wholesale and retail – you might want to look into just how brand-savvy the company really is. And cool or not, I’m running away to sea. Later, dudes…
What’s your word for not-a-lot-of-money? “Value-priced?” “Inexpensive?” “Cheap?”
Despite today’s economic wobblies, there’s still a snooty reluctance to mention actual price in commercials and other advertising media. For years, Walmart’s TV executions, with their animated yellow smiley faces flying around the store like Pong icons with scissors, have been raked up one side and down the other by industry taste fairies. It seems like there’s still something wrong with calling inexpensive goods…adequate. It’ll do. Good enough.
This wasn’t always so, especially in ad examples from America’s Great Depression. In one story, I recall reading a 1930s department store owner put a sign up on a rack of men’s ties:
NOW TEN CENTS
They’re not very good ties
but at 10¢ they’re good enough.
(Anyone know where I can find the original of this retail tale?) Take another example, from one of inventor John Frier’s companies: Alox Shoe Laces. Like his POP sign says above, there are good sets and better sets.
In any hard economic cycle, “Best is the enemy of good enough.” But for reasons of entitlement or sensitivity, it’s not acceptable to say that some goods are better or less good than others. I wonder if that applies to the scale or complexity of the product.
For example, most people know that a 2009 Beemer M6 costs one hell of a lot more than, say, a 2009 Buick LaCrosse. And for about half the Buick’s cost, you can get an adequate car that’ll get you there and back…we understand the differences in these platforms. On the other hand, tell your friends that you’ve found a superb wine for $3.50 or $4.00 and you’re gonna get laughed at. (I suppose you ought to see what I wrote about Estación, below.)
Most retail conversations never say anything outright about the price-value relationship. Even Walmart has changed its apparent presentation to the world. I say “apparent” because it’s mostly thanks to Walmart that Americans can have such relatively high-quality goods at such low prices.
The company’s slogan these days is, “Save money. Live better.” Nothing wrong with that.
