Yesterday, as I was picking up my regular morning cappucino from Ottolenghi (the best espresso in Notting Hill), I was surprised to see literally hundreds of people queuing all the way down Ledbury Road, waiting in anticipation for the latest batch of Anya Hindmarch "I am not a Plastic Bag" bags to go on sale. While Ledbury Road is often buzzing on weekends, it is usually quiet during the week, giving Notting Hill the village-like charm that it is famous for. I had read on the Vogue site that morning that these bags were being released, but I never expected people to be so desperate for the bags that they would wait outside on a cold weekday morning for hours on end. I guess that fact that Lily Cole, Keira Knightly, Lilly Allen and others have been spotted with these bags of late has something to do with the pent-up demand.
On the surface, from a business and marketing perspective, the exercise appears to be great for the Anya Hindmarch brand, which is not terribly well known outside of fashion circles. By partnering with Sainsbury’s to widely distribute the bags later in April, she would appear to be building brand awareness with a new audience of customers who would have found her regular collection of bags out of their price range. That said, the company claims that they had no idea that the bags would be in such demand, that this was not some clever marketing exercise, and that they really wanted to focus on the environment as a key concern for the British public.
Taking the company’s claims at face value and with a pinch of salt, lets evaluate the potential for success on both of these aims anyway, i.e. 1. creating awareness of the Anya Hindmarch brand and 2. creating awareness of environmental issues.
First, yes, there will be more awareness of Ms. Hindmarch’s brand, but it seems that it will be with customers who can’t afford her regular bags. So, how will she monetise and cash in on this awareness? She certainly isn’t making any money on the £5 bags themselves. Having hundreds of people show up at Harvey Nichols and Harrods and Ledbury Rd to buy a £5 bag is one thing, but how will she take that first interaction with these customers and extend it into a meaningful relationship that will create revenues down the road? Furthermore, since an environmental position is not a core part of the Hindmarch brand’s DNA, the effort in and of itself doesn’t seem feel authentic, as it would for high-end enviro-conscious brands like Noir or Edun.
Second, if this was an aim to increase general environmental awareness, by using celebrities and ‘fashion’, Ms. Hindmarch has only served to attract fickle customers who just want what’s perceived to be hip. They are not necessarily buying into the environmental movement (even after buying the bags they probably still haven’t heard of An Inconvenient Truth, the Kyoto Protocol or Carbon trading). Rather, they are likely just buying into yet another trend that will one day fade when the next trendy ‘it’ item comes along. Just the fact that people were spending £200+ on these bags on Ebay shows that many consumers are missing the supposed point altogether. It still remains to be seen whether people actually continue to use the bags instead of plastic bags once the hip factor has worn off.
To be honest, I found this whole "not a plastic bag" initiative quite confusing. It is important that companies think carefully about what the specific purpose of each activity is, to be sure that it aligns with their overall strategy and to ensure they execute on it well. The Hindmarch company has potentially made several mistakes that could have negative impact over the longer term. The "We are What We Do" charity that partnered with Hindmarch on the initiative is publicly stating that they are unhappy with how some things have turned out, especially with regards to the bags selling on Ebay, which is a direct result of marketing the bag like a fashion item. For the broader public, its just another high-street fashion collaboration of disposable fashion a la Giles for New Look, Proenza Schouler for Target, and Stella McCartney for H&M: here today, gone tomorrow. If only environmental issues and the problems that they could bring for all of us were as simple as that.
This calls into question the credibilty of Hindmarch’s environmental aims and certainly takes away some of the halo effect of the initiative. By treating this bag like any other fashion item, Hindmarch created a buzz that might be helpful for a Dior saddlebag, but which seems stupid for a canvas bag trying to send an environmental message. (Maybe they weren’t really worred about sending the environmental message at all?) This in turn has resulted in some negative press about the bags on the BBC and some blog sites questioning the real eco-friendliness of the bags. Real environmentalists are finding this all laughable and it could turn them off the brand completely.
As far as I see it, the only things that Hindmarch has successfully done is to create brand awareness amongst a customer base that could never afford her products and create buzz about a product in the same way as every other "it" item, allowing smart Ebayers to capitalise on the buzz while the Charity partner looks on and wonders what went wrong, and why the money being made is not going towards the cause that the whole things was supposed to be about.
Made in America | The False Choice
