Marketing Strategy and SWOT Analysis of Faber Castell
Many people these days have fully transferred from pen and paper to their computers. They like making their grocery lists on their phones. They take notes during lectures on their computers. And they have probably even forgotten what it feels like to hold a pen. On the other hand, some other people are still just as passionate about writing things down as people were ten years ago. If you like writing different stuff, you know that a good pen is a must. It has to feel satisfying for you to get the job done. Faber Castell is the topic of our conversation today.
Let us start the discussion with the mission and vision statements of the company.
The mission statement of Faber Castell is the following:
“We motivate people to bring their ideas into reality and express themselves by delivering inspiring product concepts. To be successful, we need to transform from being a product-driven to being a customer-centric and experience-driven company. As a brand we need to offer creative experiences and added value that inspire and delight our customers. This is the tangible benefit we offer our customers – so that they always choose Faber-Castell time after time.”
Writing or even drawing are necessities for people as self-expression. Even at work or in school, when people write things down, it is a choice. The main goal of this company is to encourage people to freely express themselves in the world of writing.
A great experience with writing begins with a good pen. The quality of the pen has to be good enough so that you want to keep writing. That is another aspect that this company deeply pays attention to. They do everything of their power to make sure that consumers are happy and relieved and want to keep creating.
The crayons and markers that Faber Castell offers feed to the creativity of the consumers. They can always make their writing more visual, and personalized to themselves with more color and shapes.
The vision statement of the company is the following:
“We unleash creative potential”.
Every person has creativity implanted in their brain to some extent. Some people know exactly what it is and how to use them. Some other people, on the other hand, have not found it yet, and are still on the search.
What Faber Castell’s goal is here is to help people find their gift of creativity.
The key to any sort of achievement is the locating of your creativity. You have to use every aspect of it to guide you through the journey of your potential destinations.
People grow as humans as well when they explore their creativity. That gives them more power to think of new and great ideas and to then turn them into reality.
Faber Castell makes sure that each and every one of their employees feel included. All of them somehow contribute to the performance of the whole company.
Moving on, let’s reveal Faber Castell’s positioning strategy.
This post is one of Faber Castell’s holiday spirit posts for its followers.
We see a short video where somebody uses Faber Castell’s colorful pencils to draw a gingerbread man. It would be safe to say that the end result can be an accurate representation of the gingerbread man from Shrek.
The caption of the post is pretty fun. It gives instructions as to how to make gingerbread cookies. But then it also hints at the fact that our minds can turn every possible scenario into reality. We can put everything we think of on a piece of paper, and it will look realistic.
The caption encourages Faber Castell’s 599k Instagram followers to draw their own gingerbread cookies. After all, little things like those always help to put somebody into the holiday spirit.
What helpful stuff can we gather from this post?
The first and most obvious hint is turning an idea into something visual. For example, I can think of an elephant right now, but I can not see it. It is not like I am going to find a live elephant anywhere near a cafe at the corner of the street where I am writing this blog.
However, I can open my notepad, take my Faber Castell pencils, and draw an elephant, regardless of the skills that I am lacking. And now, I can see the idea that I had in my head.
Secondly, we have to give it to the caption. It is so creative to compare baking to drawing. And that is exactly what Faber Castell means with its vision statement. Everybody has that creativity inside them. All they have to do is be willing to explore with it.
And lastly, both the creative caption, the drawing, and the suggestion to the followers are a form of self-expression. None of this would be possible without the ideas that were somehow represented through this post.
At this point, it becomes evident that the archetype that Faber Castell belongs to is the Creator.
What do we know about this archetype?
Desire: make something of steady value
Aim: provide shape to a vision
Strategy: design artistic power and mastery
These are the messaging levels of the archetype.
Level One: visions, imaginations, moments of inspiration
Level Two: being visionary or innovative in mimicking patterns
Level Three: giving shape to your own image
Level Four: assembling systems that affect civilization and society
The Creator archetype might provide a good identity for your brand if.
- if your product’s position facilitates self-expression, supplies the consumer with choices and options, enables to boost innovation, or is creative in design
- in a visionary area, like marketing, public relations, the arts, technological creation
- when you are aiming to distinguish it from a company that “does it all” for the client, leaving little room for creativity
- when a do-it-yourself feature saves the customer finances
- if your buyers have enough free time for creativity to blossom
- if your association has a Creator culture
The next aspect that we are going to touch upon is the SWOT analysis of Faber Castell.
Strengths
Huge product range: This brand offers a wide variety of products. Among those, we can see pens, pencils, markers, crayons, compasses, etc. These products fall under ‘playing & learning’, ‘creative studio’, ‘art & graphic’ categories. And, of course, let us not forget the general writing demand.
Feasible price: The products of this company have reasonable prices. The price ranges differ, but most people can find something suitable for them. The company offers a category for luxury products, for example. And with those products, it focuses on upper-middle-class consumers.
A strong legacy: This brand has been around for over two hundred years. It has managed to gain a good amount of recognition throughout time, especially in the stationary business.
Good quality: Generally, Faber Castell’s products are of pretty great quality. The consumers who make regular purchases always end up relieved and happy with the product they get.
Global reach: The distribution network of Faber Castell is pretty comprehensive. People can buy the products that this brand offers in about 100 countries. The promotions that this brand makes for itself are usually targeted at children. That is because they are going to be the most active purchasers.
Innovation and creativity: Everything about Faber Castell screams creativity. It always comes up with new ideas to allow its consumers to utilize their creative minds. This company offers a great work environment for its employees and is strongly dedicated to its consumers.
Social and environmental responsibility: With its marketing, Faber Castell keeps positioning itself as a socially and environmentally responsible company. The materials that the brand uses for making its products are environmentally friendly. That way, the brand also encourages its consumers to be accountable and stop harming the planet they live on.
Customer service: Faber Castell does everything of its power to provide a great experience to its consumers. One way the company contributes to it is through its excellent employees.
Weaknesses
Intensive competition: Many other pretty famous stationery brands target the global market. There are also some local brands. Faber Castells faces some intense competition from those companies.
Product identity: It is a strength that Faber Castell offers both non-premium and premium products. However, that makes it problematic for the consumers to make decisions. They could either pick Faber Castell, another premium brand, or another non-premium brand.
Less loyalty among suppliers: The members of Faber Castell’s supply chain associates seem to not be committed. This brings a whole bunch of difficulties for the company.
Opportunities
Innovative products: This company enjoys being imaginative and clever with its products. The items that we see by this company are unique in their packaging, color, and design. If this company keeps this approach, it will continuously draw more attention from current and new consumers.
Maintains unique brand names: The premium and non-premium products of this company differ by their brand names. This approach is another opportunity for the company to gain more and more loyal consumers in different categories.
New categories: Growing its product range has been proven to be a success for Faber Castell. If the company keeps coming up with new categories of products, it can target new consumers.
Rapid expansion of economy: The US economy is significantly developing, which we can not say about other developed countries. Thus, Faber Castell can grow its business in the US market as a new step.
Trends of adopting higher-end products: People are starting to prefer premium brands to non-premium ones. This gives Faber Castell an opportunity to grow further in the premium segment.
Threats
Duplicate products: Instead of establishing a new brand, it is easier to make duplicate items and sell them for cheaper. There are many duplicate items of Faber Castell’s, which acts as a huge threat to the company.
The threat from local brands: Faber Castell is a German brand. There are many other stationery companies in Germany. All of those are in an intense competition which is a serious danger for most.
Brand awareness: The products of Faber Castell are not differentiated. Thus, building brand awareness has been pretty tricky for the company. And, in the long run, this can be a considerable threat.
Lastly, we will watch a video to unravel the segment that Faber Castell has chosen to target.
This video is advertising ‘True Gel’, which is one of Faber Castell’s products.
We see an interaction between two journalists at the office that they work at. A young journalist goes up to his supervisor to show a piece that he has written. While in a conversation about the supervisor’s article about Twin Towers, one of them accidentally spills water on the paper.
The junior journalist gets stressed about his article. But his supervisor reveals to him that the pen the latter has used is water-resistant. That is something that every journalist needs to have.
So what can we now gather from this ad?
The first hint that we gather is learning and growing as professionals. If this guy was not eager to grow in his field, he would not approach his supervisor.
The second hint is the sociable personality trait of both of these people, especially the younger guy. It takes him only a few seconds to find a conversation topic.
And lastly, a pen is a functional need, which is what this guy chooses to go out and buy.
By now, it becomes apparent that the segment that Faber Castell has chosen to target is Conscious Progressives.
Lifestyle and values:
Conscious Progressives are Pretty smart. They are always on the hunt for new information. People around them always have advantages because they always somehow gather valuable information from Progressives.
Progressives are practical beings when it comes to life. You can especially see their practicality with their finances. They never spend money on things they do not need.
Progressives pay particular attention to being attractive. They achieve their attractiveness with not only their looks but their personality and intellect.
This segment is surrounded by many friends that they can trust and rely on. They love spending quality time with friends, and the location of the meeting is really not of that importance.
Progressives aim for a successful career. However, it is not always that Progressives will willingly make sacrifices for career opportunities.
This segment enjoys contributing to the companies they work at as much as possible. When Progressives genuinely believe in something, they will stick to their opinion. They are ready to healthily explain their viewpoint to everybody that has an opposite belief.
This segment is environmentally friendly and shows it through their lifestyle choices.
Progressives’ friends are all different from each other, bringing something unique to the table. And Progressives love this because they thrive off of being around interesting people.
This segment deeply loves its family. They make sure to always spend some quality time with their family. And progressives need to gain recognition from their loved ones for their success.
Progressives also enjoy having some alone time. This is when they process their life’s hectic points and reflect on them.
In relationships, Progressives are serious and loyal. They usually get in long-term relationships.
Attitude to shopping:
Progressives will only pay attention to ads if they are entertaining. Aside from entertainment, ads should have some sort of message or hidden significant meaning. That is because Progressives always enjoy thinking deeply.
This segment pays zero attention to the packaging of the goods that they are purchasing. The product and its functionality are all Progressives care about.
Even when Progressives purchase items for emotional purposes, they still consider the functionality. Quality is the next most important thing before buying an item.
Because Progressives put time and effort into their looks, they buy lots of clothes. They mainly purchase comfortable staple pieces.
Other interesting facts:
- Conscious Progressives are excessively socially active human beings.
- Their hobbies reflect their brightness most of the time.
- Progressives attempt not to be mainstream. Yet, they are correspondingly relatively near to being mainstream.
- Conscious Progressives are sharp media consumers.
- Consider newspapers to be a well-known information channel.
- They are active internet consumers because it keeps them updated on world news.
- The radio is one other medium which they well use.
And that is how we wrap the ‘Marketing Strategy and SWOT Analysis of Faber Castell’ blog. We looked at the pen brand that we all love and use from a marketing point of view. That also helped us to better understand the achievements that this company has gained over time. Make sure to check out our main website for more content regarding your other favorite brands.
