Lululemon capitalized on the attention that the “Girls” videos have received – they’ve spawned countless imitators. (The video is itself a take on the popular Twitter account that eventually led to the mediocre William Shatner sitcom, Bleep My Dad Says.)
This kind of marketing is akin to a “franchise strategy,” said Detlev Zwick, a professor of marketing at York University’s Schulich School of Business.
“You have Spiderman 1, and you get 2 and 3 because it’s already worked – in this case, they’ve hooked on to what has already been a popular theme,” he said. “That’s an interesting and useful strategy, because it increases the odds when you’re tapping into something that’s already been established as a cultural trend.”
But the original video has also attracted its share of criticism from those who think it insults women. Normally, to avoid such negative sentiment, campaigns reserve any insults for competitors – and in some cases, consumers foolish enough to buy a rival product. Rogers Communications Inc. has arguably beaten this trope to death with countless online and TV ads featuring a dumpy customer of an inferior cellphone network. The slow-witted office worker repeatedly fails to learn his lesson even as he watches a stranger impress his boss, win $10,000, impress the ladies and generally live life better, seemingly all because he is a Rogers customer. (No word on whether switching phones would get him the dimples and the jawline.)
And recently Samsung joined the fray with a TV spot mocking Apple customers as mindless conformists willing to stand in nine-hour lineups simply for the cachet, while Samsung customers recognize that “the next big thing is already here.” But ads poking fun at a company’s own customers are rarer, for obvious reasons.
Lululemon seems to be in a position to take risks: This week, the company hinted at just how happy the holidays were, when it upped its forecasts for its fourth-quarter results. It now projects that it will report revenues roughly $30-million higher than previously predicted – a total of $358-million to $363-million for the three months ending Jan. 29. That should leave executives feeling as calm and self-satisfied as the woman sipping Kombucha tea in its video. Declining to comment on the strategy behind the online campaign, an external representative for the company said in an e-mail, “We are notoriously close-mouthed when it comes to marketing.”
But risky messaging has recently backfired for the brand; in October, new shopping bags with a phrase from the novel Atlas Shrugged chafed some customers who felt Ayn Rand’s philosophy of self-interest clashed with the teachings of yoga.
The “Yogis” video seems to be going over better.
“It’s risky, no doubt about it. But that’s part of the reason it works,” said Scott Stratten, the Oakville, Ont.-based author of a book about viral and social marketing, UnMarketing. “So many brands try to make videos that are funny, and they just fall flat. This one went viral because it’s actually funny … I originally had no idea it was done by them.”
“I actually found myself far more interested in them as a brand, because it was playful and fun, and it completely made me want to say, ‘You guys know. You get it,’” said Nicole Forbes, a devoted yoga practitioner in Austin, Tex., who commented on the video on YouTube and passed it around to friends. She said she recognized herself in a few of the jokes, as well as the growing “hipster quotient” at yoga classes who take themselves a bit too seriously.
Ms. Forbes says she will continue to shop at the Lululemon near her office. But while it made her laugh, there’s one thing the video can’t do: convince her to pay retail for basic black stretch pants. She’s sticking with the sales rack.
