Target Markets of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger

Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger are two renowned and successful names in nowadays fashion industry. These clothing brands are mainly engaged in the manufacturing of apparel, accessories, perfumery, etc. The production of these brands is sold in free-standing retail stores and department stores. Undoubtfully, customers have a crucial impact on the success of these brands, and choosing the right segments to target can make the future more promising. So, let’s find out what markets are the targets for these Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and understand the reasons behind their choice.

Let’s begin with Calvin Klein and discuss a campaign example.

Let’s start with one of the brand’s epic campaigns.

One of the most epic and successful campaigns of Calvin Klein was the #myCalvins campaign that they launched in 2014. The idea behind it was encouraging everyone to post looks on Instagram wearing any item from the brand with the #myCalvins hashtag.

This campaign made the brand even more popular on social platforms and has become an inseparable part of Calvin Klein. The brand uses this campaign to this day and builds on it by doing changes in the narrative to keep up with time, trends, and values.

Let’s discuss a recent example of an upgraded #myCalvins campaign that was launched in 2019.

The tagline of this campaign is “I Speak My Truth in #myCalvins”, featuring several extremely influential and popular artists. Each of them is sharing their truth in short video series aiming to encourage others to speak their truths with the #myCalvins hashtag. Among these influential characters are Billie Eilish, Shawn Mendes, Noah Centineo, Bella Hadid, Kendal Jenner, and many more.

This group of people was not chosen by chance. These young, successful, and outstanding personalities have an immense role in the formulation of tastes, preferences, and choices among youth nowadays. Working with them is a strategic step to engage the audience, spread a word about the brand, encourage participation, self-expression, uniqueness, and diversity in outlooks.  

Now it’s time to go through the communication strategy of Calvin Klein.

“Calvin Klein, or nothing at all”

Throughout the years, Calvin Klein didn’t have any exact slogan. There were different lines from the commercials of the brand that were taken and considered some kind of motto for the brand. One of these iconic lines was “Nothing comes between me and my Calvins.” but considering this as a slogan for Calvin Klein won’t be so accurate. In 2017, Calvin Klein revealed a new underwear collection for women. During this launch, the brand presented its new slogan “Calvin Klein, or nothing at all”. This slogan was revealed at the end of the commercial starring Kirsten Dunst.

The slogan shows us how confident is Calvin Klein in its quality, production, and popularity. You can feel strength, power, and intrigue in these lines. The slogan puts Calvin Klein’s name above all other brands in the market depicting the brand incomparable and one of a kind. The slogan makes you think that nothing can replace the production of Calvin Klein and if you try it once you won’t look for any substitutes.

Now it’s time to understand the segmentation strategy of Calvin Klein.

To do so, let’s watch the following commercial.

The commercial is very vibrant, dynamic, and full of multiple, diverse details and actions. It depicts different people in the same age group who are independent and at the same time connected somehow. Clearly, young, attractive, energetic, and confident people are the focus of the commercial. Each of them is doing something quite typical for their age group.

All young people in the commercial listen to the same song in different contexts throughout the video. Every character wears a different type of production by Calvin Klein like a shirt, underwear, jeans, etc. All they seem remarkably positive, sociable, and passionate.

Young characters of the video enjoy life and the company of many diverse personalities who surround them. All of them are good looking, stylish, fit, and appealing. We can see successful and popular singers and actors among all the characters who have an extremely strong influence on today’s youth, their preferences, and tastes.

The group of young people in the video symbolizes the segment that Calvin Klein wants and tries to target. After watching the commercial by the brand, discussing and analyzing it, we can surely say that Calvin Klein targets and gives immense importance to the segment called Chardonnays.

Who are Chardonnays?

Lifestyle and Values

People belonging to the Chardonnay segment are very energetic, yes oriented, and have a positive, optimistic, and practical outlook toward life. People belonging to this segment are known to be adventurous, open, and spontaneous in life.

Their attention is easily driven to engaging, interesting, and new things. Their appearance has an excessively big importance for them and Chardonnays take care after the way they look to always stay attractive. They can spend hours getting ready and known to be stylish and trendy.

Chardonnays try to always keep up with time, but despite these values and heritage have a big and special place in their minds. Representatives of this segment mainly are young professionals or students.

They tend to live in urban areas as they enjoy the drive and diversity of big cities and love the active social life there. Chardonnays mainly have from the middle to high income, and therefore good career and financial stability have significant importance for them.

Attitude to Shopping 

Chardonnays take care of their appearance very much, and they consider shopping effective means to do this. Shopping is like a lifestyle for this segment as it is one of their favorite ways to spend their time. Chardonnays are driven to trends, novelties in the market and are trying to always be stylish.

For Chardonnays, the quality of the products they buy is a priority. They can spend much, buy less, but be confident in the quality of the purchased product. Also, they are attracted to interesting and engaging advertisings that can be associated with them.

Some interesting facts about Chardonnays

• Internet is an inseparable part of their lives as Chardonnays use it to get information, make new connections with people, and share their lives, photos, etc.
• Chardonnays enjoy watching TV and mainly give preference to entertaining programs such as sitcoms where the characters are associable with them.
• The role of friends in their lives is extremely vital and often they give more importance to them rather than to the family. Chardonnays are very emotional, loyal, and tend to commit to relationships.

16 Personalities (what is for your business?)

The question is, how did Calvin Klein manage to become so popular in the global market? They found their ideal Bayer Persona and focused on them. They used their marketing arsenal to win the hearts of the Chardonnays.

What are the hidden insights of Chardonnays?

.․ Chardonnays are mostly students or young professionals living in urban, downtown areas. They are fascinated by the city, its excitement, diversity and many events. Small towns and dormitory areas aren’t particularly interesting for them outside of the weekend.

․․ Most of them have above-average wages. They generally get along well with people, and enjoy their work where they have some influence on clients, and partners. They love the work where they and their personality can shine.

․․ Chardonnays love quality products, which is reflected in other clothing purchases. They will buy something less at first but will pay more for its quality. They like to dress smart and stylishly. Large logos and very bright items will look small and low-class for them. They are the most trendy people.

You can find complete information about the Chardonnay in the electronic version of the “16 Personalities” creative workbook developed by THE SOCIAL GRABBER team, the image link of which is placed below. The question arises, how to attract CHARDS? What are the characteristics of their consumer? Let me tell you that the book “16 Personalities” describes the detailed revelations of all the secrets that will significantly change the previous perception of every Businessman, Marketer, or Startup about Buyer Persona.

So, why do we need a Buyer Persona?

Based on our research Buyer Personas are the representatives with a detailed description of your ideal customer’s behavior, motivations, desires, and fears. They will help you to save time Focus on quality prospects and improve products or services to meet the needs of your target customers. It will also coordinate all of your organization’s work (from marketing to sales and service).

As the title of the book suggests, Chardonnays are in fact just one of all 16 Personalities. I am confident that the study of the individuality of each segment will take the marketing and sales strategy of each business to a new level. When you look at all 16 of them one by one, you will definitely find the ideal Buyer Persona for your brand, so you can focus all your mind on it. Such a targeting strategy is doomed to success.

The book will give you quite new knowledge about sales, negotiations, and the right relationship with customers!

Let’s move on to discussing Tommy Hilfiger and look at the brand’s marketing strategies.

In 2016, Tommy Hilfiger launched a new adaptive clothing line for children with disabilities. Through a couple of years, the brand came up with an adaptive clothing line for adults as well. It is very often extremely hard for people with disabilities to get dressed on their own. There were big demand and growth perspectives in the market in this direction. With this launch, Tommy Hilfiger becomes the first brand to create fashion-forward, trendy, and professional styles for disabled people.

Let’s go through a campaign video representing the Tommy Adaptive clothing line.

This campaign is extremely powerful, diverse, engaging, and positive. Tommy Hilfiger not only featured but also engaged people from different age groups with different disabilities to create and realize this campaign. We can see disabled people wearing pieces from the brand in the video talking, encouraging others like them to stay optimistic and positive. We can see disability influencer Lolo Spencer, who suffers from ALS. She calls everyone to embrace themselves, chase their dreams, and move forward in life.

This campaign has a big role in the way how society perceives the brand. It calls for more inclusive fashion, diversity, self-expression, confidence, encouragement despite anything. It shows that people of all ages and abilities can find something for them in the production of the brand.

Thanks to this campaign people will perceive Tommy Hilfiger’s brand image more positively and will always have in mind the fact that this brand is doing something great and positive for diverse groups of people.

Moving on, let’s discuss the communication strategy of Tommy Hilfiger. 

To do so, let’s have a look at their logo.

From the very beginning, Tommy Hilfiger was presenting its mark as preppy-inspired and nautical. The shape of the brand’s logo was taken from the International Code of Signals. The original meaning of the symbol used in the logo is different but Mr. Hilfiger chose this emblem to symbolize his surname “Hilfiger” with the “H”.

The logo of Tommy Hilfiger has 3 colors that remained unchanged throughout continuous evolvements and updates. These 3 colors are red, blue, and white borrowed from the US flag. They symbolize America, the origin, heritage, and background of the brand.

The logo of Tommy Hilfiger hasn’t changed much since first being introduced in 1985. The color of letters is now blue, in contrast with the white before. The other change that was made is very minor, hard to notice, and addressed typeface that is narrower now.

By analyzing the logo of Tommy Hilfiger, we can say that the initial origin of the company had a great influence on the brand and continues to play an immense role in its way. The 3 colors used in the logo are present in all the collections made by the brand. The founder of the company plays the most important role in the evolvement of the brand. The brand carries his name and presents the vision of the founder to this day. 

Now, let’s identify the target markets and consumer profile of Tommy Hilfiger .

Let’s start by discussing the following commercial featuring Zendaya.

The commercial represents the capsule collection of Tommy Hilfiger created together with Zendaya. In this case, Zendaya is not only the co-creator but also a collective character who represents the segment that Tommy Hilfiger is trying to target. She presents the collection together with other female characters in the video. She looks very energetic, dynamic, powerful, successful, and confident.

Zendaya is a bold, beautiful, and strong character, who looks neat and trendy. All her looks are carefully chosen and perfectly matched. Zendaya is in an urban environment surrounded by everyday buzz and dynamism of a big city. Combining all the discussed details it becomes clear that Tommy Hilfiger puts its focus on a segment called Carpe Diem.

Who are Carpe Diems?

Lifestyle and Values

Representatives of the Carpe Diem segment are extremely active, outgoing people who like to fill their lives with dynamism and variety. They tend to spend their time in upscale places. Carpe Diems love spending time with friends and overall enjoy life.

These people want to be independent both financially and in any other possible way. Thus, people belonging to the Carpe Diem segment understand the importance of having a good career very well.

They are ready to sacrifice a lot and even time with family to reach the top of their career and be successful. Carpe Diems focus on the present and try to get as much as possible from every moment. They are adventurous, spontaneous, like challenges, and taking risks.

Appearance has crucial importance for the representatives of this segment, and they tend to keep up with novelties, trends in the market, and always look neat. Carpe Diems have a strong bond with culture, and are very often visit museums, exhibitions, and cultural events.  

Attitude to Shopping:

Carpe Diems are brand-oriented people. They usually tend to choose high-quality products and value quality over quantity. People from this segment rarely switch between brands they choose and are extremely loyal to their initial choices and brands. Their shopping habits do not change in general.

They seek personal ensure whenever making a purchase. Carpe Diems find the shopping process and spending money very pleasing, enjoyable and want to make sure that they got the best deal.

Some interesting facts about Carpe Diems

• Reading books is a very favorable activity for Carpe Diems. When reading they prefer biographies and literary books.
• Carpe Diems are not interested in watching TV. Nevertheless, whenever they do watch it, they give preference to something mainstream like movies, sports, music, etc.
• The Internet is something they use all the time. Carpe Diems use the internet not only for entertainment but also for making new connections with people.

Both Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger are remarkably successful and passionate about what they do. Undoubtfully, these two brands will continue growing and pleasing customers with their trendy and high-quality products. That’s it for these brands and their strategies. Check out the main page of our website for more posts like this.