Ralph Lauren Corporation - Essay Example

The Ralph Lauren Corporation is an expensive and affluent lifestyle company and fashion retailer in United States of America. It has provided its customers with the facilities of high end men and women clothes, accessories, perfumes, home accessories, footwear and housewares. The company is famous for some of its brands and people all over the world use their products as a high class status label. The most famous brand of Ralph Lauren is Polo Ralph Lauren; along with that it also manages other small brands and businesses. The main headquarters are situated in east of New York City. The company was established by the sale name named as Ralph Lauren in 1968. The first brand launched by Lauren was the collection of ties for men under the brand name of POLO Ralph Lauren.[Ral13] The idea initiated 40 years past using a collection of ties has now fully-fledged into a whole ecosphere, re-establishing American civilization. The company Ralph Lauren gave best quality products to its customers and the products are very high class. It has continuously aimed for distributing excellent goods, making world fashions and appealing folks to play their role in our vision. They were the trendsetters of lifestyle ads that express a levelbesides that Ralph Lauren waschief to producegoods that inspireclients to contribute in that standard of living.[Ral13] RalphLauren.com takes this input to an innovative base as a rich and thrillingsharedpurpose. The company gives utmost importance to its customers and provide them exactly what they want from the company. This adds value to their services and brands.Once you’re into the world of Ralph Lauren online, you can shop for countlessgoods for yourself and your home, take part in the fun andquest, smartness and philosophy, people can find everything related to their fashion wardrobe in the house of fashion by Ralph Lauren. The company has now strongly penetrated in the market and no brand can compete with their status all over the world.[Ral13] Today the company is operating 179full-services stores, 171 factory stores, and 281discounted based shop outlets. Different famous brands include: Polo Ralph Lauren, Black Label, Purple Label, RLX Denim and sportswear for tennis, and sportswear for golf. The brands for women were also launched by Ralph Lauren; Black Label, Blue Label, RLX Lauren Ralph Lauren, and Denim & Supply for women. The brands for children includes: Ralph Lauren Children wears,Baby Ralph Lauren, Ralph Lauren Home, Denim & Supply Other small scale fashion brands include: Club Monaco, Chap, and American Living. Polo sport, Polo Denim, Ralph Lauren jeans co. and blue label were other famous brands of the company.The corporationis running the restaurants under the name of RL and under the Rugby Ralph Lauren branding.[Fin09] Operating any company at such a big level as Ralph Lauren is a difficult task. The management head need to be very interactive and fast thinkers. The decision making parties must be experienced. Different marketing tools help the larger companies to make their marketing strategies successful and take their corporation to the high level of achievement. Marketing tools paly important role in the strategy building process for advertisement of the brands and companies.[Fin09] A marketing strategy is a general promotion plot planned to encounter the wants and necessities of consumers. The idea should be founded on strongaims. A number of methods will then be engaged to make certain points that the promotion plan is efficiently and well delivered. Marketing procedures are the tackles used by the marketing section. The marketing section will set out to classify the utmostsuitable tools to achieve maximum profits and generate revenues. These marketing techniques include consumer promoting campaigns public relations, trade and, point-of-sale materials, editorial, publicity and sales literature.[The11] The most important marketing tool to get hold over your business firmly is sponsorship tools and strategies build up by the company management heads.When seeing the promotion and publicizing wants of your corporate, at hand you may have many paths by which you can place your brands or logo design.[The11] In the improvements of Internet technology, in addition to wireless devices, electronic and print media severalfirms are in view of the use of sponsorships as a system to grasp a demographic of clients or consumers.[mor06] Every marketing or public relation firm are incorporating sponsorship into the empire of products they propose to their consumers. The Ralph Lauren corporate has used the sponsorship tool of promotion and marketing. They designed different sponsorship programs for their company and implemented them to achieve the high end of popularity in different group of consumers.[mor06] Ralph and Lauren sponsored the American home of Down ton , the company has contracted on to turn out to be a national business sponsor for PBS’s mythical drama collection, Masterpiece, which has so far won six Emmy Awards for Outstanding Costumes during the course of its 41-year run on public television. The move marks the first television backing for the American design firm, and it’s no accident that Ralph Lauren would select to be relatedwith Masterpiece, assumed the inspiration that shows like Downton Abbey frolicked on the schemeimage’s fall collection, which elegantlyarouses the atmosphere and grace of the play’s WWI-set second spell, uniting a contemporaryawareness with an sophisticatedagelessness. At that time, Lauren has said to the Julian Fellowes that the drama was amazing. In this paper the feelings of both parties are quoted in words as the vice president of Ralph Lauren said: “We are very pleased to build the link with amusing Masterpiece and public television;this is a prestigiousbonding with a brand that represents the same commitment to value and brilliance as Ralph Lauren Corporation”.[mai12] Ralph Lauren’s major on-air sponsorship messages for Masterpiece begin on September 30, 2000, with the inauguration of Spell 2 of Upstairs Downstairs. The company joins current Masterpiece sponsor Viking River Cruises as corporate supporters, while subsidy is also provided by public-television spectators and donors to the Masterpiece Trust. The masterpiece produces also admired the interest shown by Lauren himself for the sponsorship he said and it is quoted here in the paper: “To have Ralph Lauren choose Masterpiece as their first TV sponsorship is an incredible tribute to our series. Their support will help us maintain the standard of excellence that drew them to Masterpiece in the first place."[tHE12]Downton Abbey has won 16 Emmy Awards nominations this year, including one for ExceptionalGetups for its second season. The cast was wearing costumes of Ralph Lauren in award ceremony. One more sponsorship offered by the classic art of fashion designers Ralph Lauren was to the Webb Simpson. This sponsorship was multiyear sponsorship. Polo Ralph Lauren proclaimed that expert player of golfWebb Simpson has signed a multi-year contract to present its Polo Golf collection. As share of the corporation, Mr Simpson will help as a brand diplomat for Polo Ralph Lauren all over the world and will be included in a nationwidepromotionmovement for the product and will wear outfit from the Polo Golf collection. The management head of advertising department of Ralph Lauren have positive opinion about their sponsorship and signing Webb as their partner as he is an extremelybrilliantsportsperson who exemplifiesfreshness and a typicalsmartness, creating him a faultless one for the Polo Golf brand.As Mr Simpson was one of his kind golf player, he was popular and people follow him this will help Ralph corporate to increase their customers. On other hand Webb support the largest brand of clothing in America and he says that to play at his best he has to wear the best and comfortable outfits. Ralph Lauren Corporation provides him with most suitable and comfortable clothing for sports.[Wor10] Other golf players also start following Ralph Lauren Polo brand and they use its outfit for playing professionally. To provide the best and quality product to the sportsmen of America and the corporation keep introducing new brands for golf. The company keep introducing new brands for sportsmen and they organize golf championships.All players also follow Mr Simpson and use Polo brand of Ralph. Other players include Tom Watson, Davis Love III, Luke Donald, Jonathan Byrd and Morgan Pressel[Wor10]. Ralph Lauren Corporation was the official sponsor of 2006 Wimbledon Tournament that attracted thousands of viewers and provided sports outfits that were worn by the players participating in the tournament. Wimbledon has been the host to players from around the world and the viewers’ count has never dropped below tens of thousands. These individuals directly or indirectly viewing the celebrities gathered from all over the globe acquired the image that Ralph Lauren was the best in the business; this in turn increased their sales by tenfold. In April 2008 Ralph Lauren sponsored the U.S Olympic teamand as the Olympics were held in Beijing, China, their publicity spread to areas of China aswell inclusive of all the countries gathered in the event. Players of the U.S Olympics team used accessories being manufactured by Ralph Lauren only further advertised the brand. Again, tens of thousands of viewers who set their eyes upon the U.S Olympic team noticed one thing common in all their players and that was the brand Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren’s sponsorship for NY Times iPad app also helped in brand promotion as NY Times is the leader in the newspaper business. 80% of iPad users are found to have NY Times app installed which helped in further marketing of the product. They also purchased the whole ad inventory of NY Times for the 16-day long stretch of the Olympics and provided free access to users to several categories in NY Times’ website. Ralph Lauren’s sponsorship also helped NY Times attract users. iPad is found to have been used by all age groups, this causes the ads to be viewed by a diverse target market leading to individuals to be leant towards the brand irrespective of their age. The type of brand that Ralph Lauren is, it has no restriction to as to what age group can use the products.[Mar12] Sponsorship used as marketing tool by Ralph Lauren Corporation left many positive effects on the reputation of company and its popularity. The company was one of the top most companies of United of America. Directors and producers of different drama shows and serials felt honoured by the sponsorship of Ralph Lauren and they get more and more viewers. It has recall and imposing effect on the consumers of Ralph Lauren, it worked like traditional advertising and people get attracted towards it. Advertising your product can change the perception of that specific product in the mind of customer but when we talk about sponsorship it changes the perception of company overall. If the company takes certain measures sponsorship tool can lead it towards highly dreamed success. Some of the steps are targeting your market and involving target market in this sponsorship. The target market must be larger part of audience. Make the entire event so interesting that it will bring all the audience towards your brand. The material and content used must be interesting and according to the level of minds of audience. There are a variable sponsorship from a business perspective, these benefits varies according to the nature of the business. Now looking at the current status of Ralph Lauren they can achieve their maximum through sponsorship methods though the particulars can differliable on the precise sponsorship package. The majoruse of sponsorship can be characterizedfounded on whether they straight help the sponsoring business or do so indirectly by benefiting the community as a whole. Straightprofits may include increased tag or brand gratitude and abetter public feelingtowards the corporate. A business can occasionallyhelpdisjointedly as well if the organization, event or cause being sponsored has anoptimisticresult on the community.Ralph Lauren gets potential tax advantages as well due to their sponsorship strategies. The companyheads while offering sponsorship must keep certain points in their minds. Ralph Lauren always analyse the whole scenario and get sponsorship packages accordingly. They determine the payback of sponsorship towards their business and then take the decision.Ralph Lauren when sponsor different TV shows and seasons they sign their contracts with the agreement that all crew and cast will wear their brand this promote their products. The company sets it goals and advertising department designs the sponsorship plans and levels. Ralph Lauren Corporation are most famous because of their quality and secondly because of their sponsorship design and levels. There are abundant sponsorship levels offered by Ralph Lauren Corporation, every level of sponsorship plans offer different assistances for parallel amounts of pay back money. These benefits includemoney back profits, promotion of brands and products, sale of popular brands, fame and popularity. The major advantage that Ralph Lauren acquired from such campaigns was that they could easily target a variety of market. Everyone who watched T.V cereals and that includes a large communitynoticed the brand logo at some point.They became aware and recognized the symbol as something expensive and unique as it was being worn by employees of show business. These campaigns further enhanced the loyalty of those already wearing Ralph Lauren and using the brand. They found out that they chose right and their uncertainty vanished as they began to see the same shirts being worn by celebrities. The count of brand loyal customers increased exponentially for Ralph Lauren. Advertisements were no longer necessary as their brand name and logo was already on the television, and sports tournaments like Wimbledon and majority of the population was already watching it. This saved them the cost of marketing which was turned to further improving the quality of the products. A major financial part of a company is normally spent on marketing but Ralph Lauren brought this new strategy into the business and saved such costs although quite a lot was spent on sponsorships. Such sponsorships helped represent Ralph Lauren as a whole company and not just focus on a single product or subdivision. Ralph Lauren’s recognition as the provider of quality clothing was enhanced due to all these campaigns that they followed. Normally advertisements only focus on a specific target market but Ralph Lauren’s strategies of sponsoring major eventsfocused on a very broad range of individuals through face to face interaction. And if viewers already know about the brand, these steps would only improve their opinion about it. Careful consideration is required in leading these sponsorships as a negative impact is also possible which would lead to the loss of customers. These campaigns also allowed Ralph Lauren to tell the community that they are community-minded as they sponsored major community events and saved the time for directly trying to spread their care for the community through words.The community recognised Ralph Lauren as a brand that helped as far as it could by spending in events that in turn helped the community in direct or indirect ways. Bibliography Finding Universe, 2009. Polo/Ralph Lauren Corporation History. [Online] Available at: http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/polo-ralph-lauren-corporation-history/ [Accessed 6 May 2013]. mailonline, 2012. Ralph Lauren to support Downton Abbey as fashion house signs first TV sponsorship. [Online] Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2201237/Ralph-Lauren-support-Downton-Abbey-fashion-house-signs-TV-sponsorship.html [Accessed 6 May 2013]. Marketing news and expert advice, 2012. Ralph Lauren Embeds Brand in NY Times Olympics iPad App. [Online] Available at: Ralph Lauren Embeds Brand in NY Times Olympics iPad App [Accessed 6 May 2013]. morebusiness.com, 2006. Why Sponsor? Sponsorship Benefits & Event Sponsorship Benefits. [Online] Available at: http://www.morebusiness.com/running_your_business/marketing/Sponsorship-Marketing.brc [Accessed 6 May 2013]. Ralph Lauren online, 2013. Ralph Lauren. [Online] Available at: http://global.ralphlauren.com/en-us/About/Pages/default.aspx [Accessed 6 May 2013]. tHE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, 2012. Ralph Lauren to Sponsor PBS' 'Masterpiece,' Create Special 'Downtown Abbey' Ads. [Online] Available at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ralph-lauren-sponsor-masterpiece-pbs-downton-abbey-369044 [Accessed 6 May 2013]. The Times 100: business case studies, 2011. Marketing theory. [Online] Available at: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/business-theory/marketing/marketing-techniques.html#axzz2SaZ9ZOan [Accessed 6 May 2013]. WorldGolf, 2010. Polo Ralph Lauren signs Webb Simpson for multi-year sponsorship. [Online] Available at: http://www.worldgolf.com/newswire/browse/61676-Polo-Ralph-Lauren-signs-Webb-Simpson-multi-year-sponsorship [Accessed 6 May 2013]. Read More