Etam Final Report_Group II

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Content 1. Project objective......................................................................................................... 2

2. Methodology .............................................................................................................. 2

3. Brand Background ..................................................................................................... 3

3.1 Brand history .................................................................................................... 3

3.2 Etam in China .................................................................................................. 4

3.3 General review of marketing on Sina Weibo ................................................... 5

4. General review on Etam and other fashion brands on Weibo .................................... 5

4.1 Basic data analysis ........................................................................................... 5

4.2 Weibo content category of fashion brand ........................................................ 6

4.3 Etam’s  Weibo ................................................................................................... 7

4.4 Content category analysis ................................................................................ 8

4.5 General  analysis  on  followers’  interest  tag ...................................................... 9

5. Findings  of  followers’  interview .............................................................................. 10

5.1Endorser recognition issue .............................................................................. 10

5.2 Motivation for real purchase .......................................................................... 11

6. Competitor activities analysis .................................................................................. 11

6.1 Uniqlo: ........................................................................................................... 11

6.2 H&M .............................................................................................................. 12

6.3 ONLY ............................................................................................................. 13

6.4 Ochirly, Meters/bonwe, Zara ......................................................................... 13

7. Recommendation: .................................................................................................... 15

7.1 Choose a new brand ambassador ................................................................... 15

7.2. Take advantage of KOLs(key opinion leaders) ............................................. 16

7.3. Understand Etam followers well ................................................................... 18

7.4. Keep your Weibo homepage fresh to the followers ...................................... 19

8. Budget ...................................................................................................................... 20

9. Evaluation ................................................................................................................ 21

10. Appendix list .......................................................................................................... 22

11. Reference list .......................................................................................................... 25

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1. Project objective

This project aims at evaluating fashion brand – Etam’s  marketing  strategy  on  Sina  

Weibo by comparing other fashion brands which have official account on Weibo. To

be specific, three major objectives are to figured out in this project:

¾ To have a clear understanding on the performance of Etam and other six fashion

brand on Weibo

¾ To  glean  intelligence  and  insight  from  Etam  and  competitors’  Weibo

¾ To  provide  our  own  implication  and  recommendations  to  Etam’s  Weibo strategy.

2. Methodology

Both qualitative and quantitive methods are applied in this report.

¾ With  the  help  from  Gary,  who  is  Etam’s  online  public  relationship  manager,  we  

have  access   to  some  internal  data  on  Etam  and  other  six  competitors’  KPI  from  

January to June 2013. It gives us availability to gain a clear understanding of the

objective brands.

¾ Three   interviews  with   the   objective   brands’   followers   are   conducted   to   analyze  

their perception on Etam and its competitor brand on Weibo.

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3. Brand Background

3.1 Brand history

For nearly a century, Etam, a well-known French clothing brand, has offered women

fashion tailored to their desires.

In September 1916, Max Lindeman opened his first store selling stockings in the heart

of Berlin, Germany. The Etam brand was born. These modern, synthetic stockings

were a success due to their popularity with women starting to go out to work. In 1924,

the company moved into run-proof lingerie, which enjoyed a big success. In 1928,

Etam relocated the store in France, and then it became one of the most successful

retail chain stores and spread to the whole world. In 1963, Etam created ready-to-wear

line. In year 1965, Etam develops what comes to be known as permanent automatic

restocking, a "just-in-time" supply technique allowing for supply to be adjusted

permanently to customer demand, which was kind of a huge move at that time. In

1983, Etam launched 3 sub brands. In 1995, Etam opened the first sales outlet in

Shanghai, and started its journey in China market. In 1997, Etam was listed on the

Second Marché of the Paris Bourse. In 2008, Etam launched the Undiz brand, which

also leads a huge success in the coming years. In 2008, Etam opened the largest outlet

dedicated to lingerie in Europe, rue de Rennes in Paris. In 2012, Etam opened « So

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Ouest », a new concept in lingerie, which helps increase the value of sales of lingerie

to some extent. In the beginning of this year, Undiz opened a new store in Marocco

after France, Belgium, and Spain, which attracted thousands of people on the first day

after opening ceremony. In the same year, the lingerie brand innovates by creating a

range of tights, stockings and socks: "Jolies Jambes" collection by Etam.

At present, Etam has over 3,300 retail stores in 42 different countries. The value of

sales is more than 9,694 million European dollar.

3.2 Etam in China

Etam started its journey in China market since 1995. Now Etam has long-term

development in more than 45 cities in China, and it has 3189 branch stores. The value

of sales is over 1 billion RMB per year.

Etam has 7 sub brands and they are focusing on different styles and sharing different

groups of target customers. ES focuses on youth and academic, Etam Paris focuses on

mature style, Etam weekend focuses on fashion design, Etam Lingerie focuses on

female  underwear,  and  Etam  Homme  focuses  on  men’s  wear,  Etam  Kids  focuses  on  

children’s  wear,  E&Joy  focuses  on  sweet  and  girly.  Among  them,  ES,  Etam  Paris  and  

Etam Weekend are most popular.

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3.3 General review of marketing on Sina Weibo

Sina Weibo is the hottest microblog platform in China, and in use by well over 30% of

Internet users and 56.6% active users of microblog, with a market penetration similar

to what Twitter has established in the USA.

Sina Weibo has a user base of 424 million at present, and the number of daily active

users  is  42.3  million.  There’re  230,000  enterprises  having  their  official  accounts  on  

Sina Weibo, and 90% of the top 20 clothing brands have official accounts.

Etam started its official account on July 27, 2011, and the number of fans is 319,128.

The major competitors of Etam are H&M, Only, Gap, Uniqlo, Peach Joint and

Veromoda. All of them have official accounts with large sum of fans on Sina Weibo.

Among them, Uniqlo has the largest fans number, which reached a peak at 1,940,108.

Gap, on the other hand, is the first one to set up its official account, the specific time

is October 18, 2010.

4. General review on Etam and other fashion brands on Weibo

4.1 Basic data analysis

The appendix 11 indicates some basic indicators about Etam and other six objective

brands. Some intuitive conclusions can be found from it:

1 Appendix 1

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¾ Among the seven objective brands, Etam ranks 2nd in the number of new tweets

on Weibo which proves that Etam brand account is very active in posting new

content to communicate with its followers.

¾ In terms of number of followers, Etam only comes at 5th position after Uniqlo,

H&M, Only and Peach John. Among these brands, Uniqlo and H&M are

international apparel brands with relatively better brand awareness which may

bring more followers for their brand account on Weibo. However, the other two

brand Only and Peach John are the evidence that Etam still have something to

improve on Weibo because Only is just targeting the similar segment as Etam and

Peach John is only famous for its female underwear product.

¾ Another two key indicators to evaluate spreading ability for an account on Weibo

– retweet rate (number of tweet/number of tweet) and comment rate(number of

comment/number of tweet) – are also left behind Uniqlo and H&M.

4.2 Weibo content category of fashion brand

After looking over the posted contents of the objective Weibo brands, their tweet

content can be classified into seven categories.

Product introduction – new product pictures and short narratives combination is the

most common style for this kind of type.

Lifestyle related content – information about travel, skin care, movie, entertainment

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gossips are the major parts in this category. The content may not directly related to the

brand but an eye-catcher news can usually boost the number of comments and

retweets.

Online campaign – Usually  consistent  with  brand’s  offline  campaign  and  social  

networking platform has been proved to be a powerful tool to attract buzz many

times.

Brand story & culture – It’s  usually  conveyed  by  a  series  of  short  story  about  brand.

Fashion trend – Etam  is  good  at  this  type  of  content  for  its  label  “French  fashion  news”  

which is a specific content label will regularly post latest fashion news from France.

Celebrity & designer – Famous brand spokesperson and influenced fashion designers

who is related to the brand will be good topic to set up the buzz on Weibo.

Online campaign – This is a good way for both promoting products and enhance the

relationship with followers on Weibo. Luck draw and online coupons also belong to

this category.

4.3 Etam’s  Weibo

Now Etam is operating two accounts on Weibo – Etam China and Etam Fans Group

respectively2. Etam Fans Group is an account only available for the extremely

followers  who  can  post  their  photos  with  Etam’s  product  on  Weibo. There will be

2 Appendix 2

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regular lucky draw of discount coupons as incentive among follower to reward their

high involvement.

Etam China is the main account for Etam and there are several regular content labels

will  contain  different  categories  to  followers  every  day.  “Etam  morning”  will  be  

released  on  every  morning  with  a  line  or  lyric  to  the  followers  as  a  greeting.  “Etam  

sharing”  “snap  shooting”  and  “must  have”  are  three  regular  channels  to  convey  

Etam’s  product  information.  “Etam  night  gossip”  will  release  a  hot  topic  in  

entertainment  world  every  night  and  usually  boost  followers’  interest  to  interact  with  

each other.

4.4 Content category analysis

Appendix 33 indicates the proportion of different content categories for each

objective brand. Compared with other six competitors, Etam is outstanding at

relatively  bigger  content  share  in  “lifestyle”  content.  Which  means  Etam  is  likely  to  

communicate with followers about something more than just its own products and

promotions. In this way, the communication process tends to be more emotional rather

than commercial for Etam on Weibo.

3 Appendix 3

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4.5 General  analysis  on  followers’  interest  tag

Weibo allows  its  user  to  describe  themselves  by  some  short  “interest tags4”  such  as  

“Fashion”,”Geek”,”Music”  and  so  on.  It’s  reasonable  to  use  these  personal  tags  to  

understand the followers better.

According to the data received from our informant, we compare Etam’s  22,692  

followers and Uniqlo’s  1,000  followers’  interest  tag  and  draw a chart5 to make it

clear.

We  found  that  followers  on  Etam  are  more  likely  to  describe  themselves  by  “Post  

90s”(5.9%)  whereas  the  most  age-related tag calculated among Uniqlo’s followers is

“Post-80s”(7.3%).  A  basic  conclusion  can  be  conducted  here  is  that  followers’  of  

Etam Weibo tend to be younger compared to Uniqlo. Some other most mentioned tags

such  as  “entertainment”(6.7%),  “food  &  cuisine”  (5.6%)  can  suggest  us  more  about

the  followers’  personal  habit,  interest  and  basic  profile.  

To sum it up, a typical profile of followers of Etam can be described as young (post

90S), female (food & cuisines) who pay high attention to lifestyle (travel, skin care,

health, beauty). Basically, this group of followers can perfectly match the target

customer  of  Etam’s  products  and  is  also  the  result  of  Etam’s  large  proportion  of  

lifestyle content on Weibo.

4 Appendix 4 5 Appendix 5

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5. Findings  of  followers’  interview

In  order  to  have  a  further  understanding  of  Etam’s  Weibo,  we’ve  conducted  three  

interviews with followers of Etam by telephone. All of them have followed Etam and

at least another two fashion brands on Weibo.

Due to three of interviewees are members of Etam fans group who are relatively loyal

and speak positive  of  Etam’s  brand,  we  found  that  their  user  experience  with  Etam  

Weibo are quite satisfactory. Even though, there are some negative views can be

detected after the interview.

5.1Endorser recognition issue

The  lady  presented  on  Etam’s  Weibo front page is Natalia Vodianova who is Etam’s

global spokesperson. Natalia is a supermodel who has great popularity in Europe.

However, when discussed about this endorser who will show up everyday on Weibo,

none of the three interviewees can speak out her name. Two of interviews confess that

they just thought her as a model who wearing Etam’s clothes.

Etam is the only brand who put their endorser’s image on Weibo front page among all

the seven brand. However, the low awareness of Natalia in China makes this unique

character not outstanding.

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5.2 Motivation for real purchase

Without doubt that any brand who is operating a official account on Weibo desires to

make Weibo as an motivation to boost its sales performance. When asked about

whether our interviewees have bought something due to some content the received

from Weibo, two of them told us that they used to be motivated to make real purchase

because they found some celebrities who wear objective brand’s products. It seems

like celebrity is an effective way to promote follower’s real purchase. However, due to

lack of cooperation with local celebrity, Etam is doing poor in this point – the two

brands mentioned is Uniqlo and H&M respectively.

6. Competitor activities analysis

This part would observe and analyze the activities and campaigns released by the

competitors of Etam, both including their strengths and weaknesses.

6.1 Uniqlo:

Uniqlo has a sound online promotion system to spread their brand and product

information. The Weibo platform helps to improve its brand awareness and to attract

more customers to their shops.

a. Promotions on Weibo:

Weibo acts important role in Uniqlo’s  promotions both in on-line and off-line shops.

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The  official  account  posts  the  campaigns  to  attract  people’s  attention,  and  released  

some activities can be participated by using the application on the smart phones. This

O2O strategy enabled customers to follow up the new arrivals and activities of Uniqlo

in time and may increase the traffic of the brand.

b. Interaction with fans on Weibo:

Uniqlo has links directly to their customer service center on line. People can get in

touch with the service simply instead of waiting for the automatic answers on phone

call. Besides, the official accounts of different series of Uniqlo organize some online

Q&A competitions with prize regularly to attract the public to interact with the brand.

c. KOL influence:

Uniqlo provides their dresses to some celebrities or MCs to wear on TV shows.

Through this strategy, the KOL could share their feelings about the dress directly on

Weibo and the fans of those KOLs may follow the trend of their idols.

6.2 H&M

The main strength of H&M is that they make celebrities to cooperate with the brand

in a long-run activity. For example, in 2013, H&M seized the opportunity of the new

album promotion activity of a famous female singer ZHOU Bichang. They combined

ZHOU’s  music  and  the  music  character  of  H&M  to  carry  out  an  activity  called  the  

H&M Summer Party. Later, the official account of H&M was keeping posting news

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of  ZHOU’s  album  for  promoting  their  cooperation,  and  send  ZHOU’s  album  for  free  

during the campaigns held in their off-line shops.

This kind of long-term cooperation can increase the traffic of the H&M shops because

the fans of the singer may pay attention to the brand and further increase the sale.

6.3 ONLY

ONLY is in good cooperation with an on-line sharing website, mogujie.com. more

than 80% of the users of this website are women and they share their consuming

experiences on this website with their close friends (闺蜜). Considering the strong

effect that Mogujie has, ONLY cooperated with Mogujie on the promotion on the

new category of cosmetic products. In this promotion activity, Mogujie recommended

ONLY’s  products  on  their  official  Weibo account and front page of the website, a

large number of female users get the information of the brand in time and they can

also join the campaigns held by ONLY.

Besides,  Mogujie  also  recommended  and  reposted  ONLY’s  Weibo which shared some

fashion styles on international red carpet. The public throughout these sharing may

regard ONLY as a brand becoming international which would benefit the brand image

of ONLY.

6.4 Ochirly, Meters/bonwe, Zara

These three brands are negative examples on Weibo. Different from the above

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examples, these brands have limited daily posts and the content of their Weibo should

be modified in future.

a) Ochirly:

Ochirly’s  Weibo mainly focuses on the product promotion of the brand, it is more

like an announcement board rather than a communication tool with customers.

Few interactions could be found on their Weibo.

b) Meters/bonwe:

Opposite from the Weibo of  Ochirly,  M/b’s  Weibo are mainly about some

emotional sharing but few product promotions. The official account may need to

add more information directly connected with the brand. Besides, M/b shall make

use of its endorsers, Jay Chou, who is very popular among younger generations

and fit in the brand image well, to attract more attention from the public.

c) Zara:

Different from the huge success of Zara abroad, the promotions and campaigns of

Zara in mainland China is quite limited. The posts of Zara on Weibo are only

about the new shop open or new arrivals reminder. Few interactions could be

found  on  Zara’s  Weibo account. Under a fierce competition of young and fashion

brands in China, Zara need to make some efforts to improve their brand

awareness in second and third-tier cities.

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7. Recommendation:

7.1 Choose a new brand ambassador

Regarding the brand ambassador, following points are the problems Etam China

facing now.

a). Low-awareness in China.

Natalia Vodianova, a world famous model, has been selected as the global brand

ambassador of Etam since spring 2009. She quite succeeds in modeling and fashion

oversea, but in Mainland China, she is not that well known. From the interviews with

Etam Weibo followers, we found that the interviewees said they are only familiar with

the  face  but  they  couldn’t  speak  out  her  name  correctly.  The  ambassador has little

contribution to building the relationship between brand and costumers on Weibo

platform, to say the least.

b). Unfit brand image in China

Natalia is not only the endorsement but also the designer of ETAM lingerie in

European. The underwear she endorsed is thought to be elegant, seductive and

glamorous and image of her is perceived to be mature and sexy. However, Etam,

targeting 18-25 y.o girls, is perceived to be a young and energetic brand in China.

There is a huge gap between customers perceived and Etam advocated on brand

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image. Thus choosing a good brand ambassador whose image matches the brand is

essential.

c). No interaction with Etam followers

Nowadays, Weibo is not only a platform for communication, but also a bridge

between brand and customers. It would be better of brand setting an ambassador

account to interact with brand fans on Weibo. Brand could take advantage of

ambassador’s  influence to communicate with the audience and prompt fans to engage

with brands in a more effective way. Both brand and ambassador could benefit a lot

from this.

Recommendation:

Given all that, we do suggest Etam need to change the brand ambassador or sign one

local brand ambassador for China. The new brand ambassador should have high

awareness, fit the brand image,  popular  among  Etam’s  target  customers  and  active  on

Weibo.

7.2. Take advantage of KOLs(key opinion leaders)

Nowadays, most of the apparel companies have their official accounts on Weibo, and

KOLs strategy, as an important tool is widely used by the companies to boost

information dissemination to achieve larger engagement and brand presence. The

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benefits of using KOLs can be reflected in the following two factors；

a). KOLs have great influence

Generally speaking, KOLs have a large amount of followers, ranging from a few

thousands to a few millions. What they tweets and retweets can reach a large amounts

of target audience. In addition, most of the KOLs on Weibo are marked with a capital

“V”  after  their  names,  which  could increase the credibility of the contents.

b). KOLs influence consumers’ decisions

Basically, KOLs attracted followers by its interesting post or their professional

knowledge. Followers trust the opinions of these KOLs provide and are thus

influenced by them in their own decisions. Fashion, is the main field where KOLs

play a key role on customers’ decision making. Most of them need advices before

their purchasing. To some degree, KOLs could promote the brand and products.

Recommendation:

In conclusion, it is essential for Etam to use KOLs strategy in their Weibo marketing

plan. However. Below is two types of KOLs accounts for Etam to cooperate with:

1.Organization accounts, e.g. Fashion media, Fashion News and etc.

2- Experts in fashion: who are professional in clothing matching, choosing clothing

and etc.

Besides, Etam should also pay attention to KOLs of adjacent category. From the data

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analysis, we found the followers who are caring about fashion also have interests in

cosmetics, E-commerce and etc. So further analysis is called for to deep

understanding the correlation of Etam and other category, then Etam could optimize

its KOLs strategy on Weibo.

7.3. Understand Etam followers well

Having a deep understanding of Etam  followers’ preferences and meeting their needs

will help achieve its marketing and communications goals.

Basically, Etam segments their followers by TAG analysis from which could know

what are the most popular labels they used to describe them. Then Etam could take a

more targeted strategy to approach them. However, it still called for further analysis

for a more complete understanding of their behaviors on Weibo.

a.) Behavior analysis:

Analyzing their tweets, comments, and shares over a seven-day period will help Etam

identify the best times to engage; What days and what time of the day is your

followers most likely to engage with content.

b.) Attitude analysis:

Analyzing their attitude  towards  Etam’s  tweets,  including  how  many  likes  it  received?  

How many positive comments? How many negative feedbacks? Attitude analysis will

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help Etam optimize their content strategy.

Besides, Etam also need to care more about the online trend.  For  example,  ‘Shai  

culture’  is  popular  among  Etam  followers,  and they prefer to take photos and share

with their friends. Thus Etam could develop more photo-related campaign to attract

them.

Recommendation:

Different people have different behaviors and interests, so it is useful to have a deep

understanding of your followers by using data analysis. Only in this way can Etam

develop a more powerful Weibo strategy to target their followers.

7.4. Keep your Weibo homepage fresh to the followers

Updating the homepage of Weibo frequently does help attract the followers and

increase stickiness of Weibo.

From the interviews, the interviewees mentioned UNIQLO frequently changed their

homepage to fit in the seasonal campaigns or promotions, which built up a fresh

image of UNIQLO on their minds. Given the followers of Etam are young and post

90s, from a psychological perspective，they are more preferred to receive new-news

from the brand.

Recommendation:

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For Etam, we suggest they could update the homepage of Weibo frequently matching

with the theme of their campaign and promotion. The more often you update your

homepage, the more likely your website is to get attracted. In other words, keeping

your homepage fresh and up-to-date do help your Weibo account to attract and keep

more followers.

8. Budget

For Weibo channel, Etam will invest CNY 300,000 in Q1 2014. Among them, 25,000

will be spent on Weibo page design, which accounts for one twelfth of the total

budget. 150,000 will be spent on KOL(key opinion leader) tweet, which accounts for

50% of the total budget. Besides, another one twelfth will be spent on incentives, the

responding number is 25,000 RMB. Also, 100,000 will be spent on offline pops,

which accounts for one third of the budget.

Etam selected its key opinion leader and offered the price per tweet according to how

much influence the person makes, which can be evaluate by the number of followers

to some extent. For example, ai 媚儿 has 820,000 followers and ladyNN has 180,000

followers, the price per tweet Etam offered to them is 1200 and 300 respectively.

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9. Evaluation

Etam will evaluate the Weibo performance quarterly. The KPI(key performance

indicator) measurements of communication efficiency are Weibo traffic flow, hotness

index on Sina Weibo, number of comments, number of retweets, retweet rate and

recommend rate. Besides, Etam will evaluate the attitudinal of Weibo followers by

positive and negative comments and it will evaluate the sales by sales performance of

online and offline store.

For example, Etam can get a useful feedback of communication efficiency by looking

at the number of comments and the comments rate. Then it can analyze the specific

comments with positive or negative attitude to evaluate the attitudinal of Weibo

followers. At last, the influence on sales can be shown by the sales performance of

online and offline store.

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10. Appendix list

Appendix 1 (data source: CIC data record on Weibo)

Brand Account No. of

Followers No, of

Tweets No. of

Retweets No. of

Comments Retweet

Rate Comment

Rate

UNIQLO 992,237 2,349 916,782 840,828 390 358

H&M 503,064 798 175,830 109,340 220 137

ONLY 219,529 866 81,023 25,057 94 29

PEACH JOHN 180,022 681 71,706 75,028 105 110

ETAM 159,996 1,305 89,614 89,399 69 69

GAP 60,695 585 13,825 7,779 24 13

VEROMODA 31,684 691 21,406 5,251 31 9

Appendix 2

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Appendix 3(data source: CIC data record on Weibo)

Appendix 4

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Appendix 5(data source: CIC data record on Weibo)

6.70% 5.90%

5.60% 4.30%

4.20% 3.00%

2.40% 1.20% 1.8% 1.20%

0.70%

EntertainmentPost 90s

Food & cuisinesfashion

ArtConstellation

Comic & GamesBeauty

travelMusicMuvie

Etam Top mentioned tags ranking

9.50% 8.90%

8.20% 7.30%

5.80% 4.30%

1.60% 1.20%

1.00%

Fashion

Travel

Health

Post 80s

Art

Shopping

Digital

E-commence

Music

UNIQLO top mentioned tags ranking

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11. Reference list

1. http://www.etamdeveloppement.com/en/group/history.php 2. http://www.etam.com.cn/aigezhongguo/ 3. http://e.weibo.com/etamchina

4. http://hk.fashionmag.com/news/Following-Etam-s-UK-failure-China-picks-fi

rm-up,120269.html#.Up4B_NIyZ0o

5. http://www.epresspack.net/mmr/natalia-collection-for-etam-winter-2013/

6. http://www.searchdecoder.com/social-networks-in-china-sina-weibo/