Levi’s® Thailand: Three successful marketing campaigns of 2009

DKSH is the sole franchisee and distributor of Levi’s® products in Thailand. Although the jeans market is facing challenging times, Levi’s® looks to further strengthen its position in the Thai jeans market especially by approaching younger customers as well as customers outside the capital of Thailand.

Challenge

Economic crisis, fierce competition in the fashion apparel market and the swine flu pandemic made 2009 a challenging year for Levi’s® Thailand. Despite these challenges DKSH (Thailand) managed to face the challenges with three successful marketing campaigns in order to increase brand awareness and loyalty especially in the youth market and rural areas.

Approach

To meet the challenges DKSH (Thailand) launched three marketing campaigns that aimed at different customer segments.

The first and biggest campaign was the Swap Jeans promotion, which aimed at all target groups. For this promotion customers were able to swap/exchange any pair (any brand) of jeans for a 1000 Thai Baht (22 Euros) discount when buying a pair of Levi’s® jeans worth more than 2500 Thai Baht (54 Euros) or a pair of jeans with other Levi’s® products worth more than 2500 Thai Baht (54 Euros). All exchanged jeans will then be donated for a good cause to various charities in Thailand including the Red Cross in Bangkok and Ayutthaya.

The second campaign is a collaboration with local country singer Pamela B to create a “Levi’s Song” in Thai country music style. This catchy, energetic and warm-hearted song called “Sao Levi’s” or “Levi’s Lady/Girl” will mainly be broadcasted in rural areas of Thailand. With this campaign DKSH (Thailand) was trying to gain market share in rural areas of Thailand i.e. outside of Bangkok.

The third campaign is the second installation of the successful T-story series. It consists of young local designers creating T-shirt designs (for women in this installation) for Levi’s. Each of the 8 designers created two designs each so that in total 10 different designs was introduced nationwide. The aim of this second campaign is to penetrate the youth T-shirt market and therefore increase the market share among this customer target.

Results

All three campaigns proved to be very successful in the Thai market. In August where the Swap Jeans promotion took place was one of the most successful months ever recorded for Levi’s Thailand. Sales increased nationwide and at the end more than 100,000 pairs of jeans were exchanged.

The Levi’s® song actually made it to the second and third place on two cable channels as well as third place on one of the most well-known Thai country music radio stations, 95FM. The song was played regularly on the radio since the introduction. Additionally, Pamela B. has held several concerts at major department stores mainly focusing on areas outside Bangkok. With the success of the “Sao Levi’s” song DKSH (Thailand) was able to increase the Levi’s® brand awareness in the countryside and therefore gaining market share.

The T-story 2 proved to be another successful installation of the T-shirt series. All designs were well received by Levi’s® customers. With such success T-story 2 has laid the foundation for the next T-story installation due in January 2010.

Market Expansion Services: Creativity in marketing pays off to win highly competitive market segments

Currently it is too early to say exactly by how much the activities stated above have helped us. What we can say though is that the Levi’s® brand awareness among the two target groups, the Youth and the Rural has certainly increased.