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Articles from WATCHES (859 Articles), WATCH BANDS / ACCESSORIES (41 Articles)
Bulova
Marketing assault for Bulova
Posted March 23, 2010 |
Bulova Corporation announced plans at Baselworld for a global marketing campaign, including Australia, to ignite sales of its popular range.
An impressive new range of Bulova watches targeting a broad spectrum of consumers was announced at Basel, along with a global advertising and marketing campaign that will surely be good news for Australian retailers.
Distributed in Australia by Melbourne-based Time-Essetials, Bulova displayed its desire to capture consumer and trade attention with a performance by Cirque Du Soleil for its new range titled, Precisionist.
The Precisionist features a continuously sweeping second hand and will appear in Australia with four models.
But the most exciting news, according to Bulova Cororpration, senior vice president, Francie Abraham, is the fact that the brand will be undertaking an global advertising and consumer marketing campaign with both print and television commercials.
In fact, according to Abraham, “We have historically always believed in advertising. Bulova was responsible for the first ever radio and television and commercials and in 2009 we were the only one of the Top 10 advertisers to increase our media spend in 2009.”
She said that independent media analysis showed that Bulova had an 18 per cent increase in 2009 over the previous year.
“Our plan for 2010 in the US will be to spend 175 per cent of our 2009 budget. That’s nearly doubling our budget and, of course, this marketing and advertising investment will be paralleled in other overseas markets,” she explained.
“We have all this new and exciting product with new initiatives which have to be communicated and supported to both the trade and the consumer,” Abraham added.
It was good news for John Papaioannou, managing director, Time-Essentials who was presented with the new product and global marketing campaign at Baselworld.
It was also perfect timing Papaioannou said because of the changes of some competitor’s brand positioning. “We think there’s a certain number of brands in Australia that dominate and “own” the Swiss category and then there’s the traditional brands like Seiko and Citizen that have their distinct markets - Citizen acquired Bulova in 2008 – but the new range of Bulova means we will cover all categories.”
Papaioannou believes that the new marketing campaign will significantly change the way retailers and consumers view the watch industry.
“I’ve been involved in the watch industry for a long time and I don’t recall a change like this,” he explained.
“Many of our competitors are changing their brand positioning and restructuring the industry but we are going out with a brand that is available to all of the trade and we have a wide range of product that suits their needs,” Papaioannou said.
Abraham was equally excited about the global advertising campaign, developed by Ogilivy & Mather, because, “We will be telling all consumers the same story across the globe.”
Papaioannou’s point about Bulova being available to the whole trade reflects the ever-decreasing retail distribution of some of the Swiss brands. Because Bulova features a Swiss made model, he feels retailers will be more open to the new ranges, often adding the ranges because they were denied other Swiss brands.
Time-Essential’s strategy for Australia is to co-ordinate with the global campaign with an aggressive trade-based promotion leading-up to the September International Jewellery Fair in Sydney and then, towards the second half of the year, focus strongly on consumer marketing to drive retail traffic for Christmas.
The Bulova name has a proud history. Since 1875, when 23-year-old immigrant Joseph Bulova opened a small jewellery store in New York City, the name Bulova has symbolised a unique blend of old-world craftsmanship and new-world innovation.
Bulova has also been to the Moon! The Accutron, the world’s first fully electronic watch became an integral part of US space technology, used on missions from the late ’50s through the first moon walk in 1969 and the 1973 launch of Skylab.
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