Kynza Kendall-Jones

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When I was researching Gucci’s key signifiers and symbols that reflect their heritage, I found that their main signifiers are personified through perfumes. I thought this was more than just a coincidence and easy money-making scheme, therefore I wanted to look closer at the reasoning for Perfumes and the high production campaigns that portray them.

The reason for luxury brands creating perfumes:

Perfumes are a relatively easy product to make and they are a way of reaching a younger or a slightly more economically challenged individual. They give a customer a tiny piece of being a part of the luxury fashion world without much effort and still keeping the exclusivity for the regular customers of the expensive apparel.

Gucci’s perfumes:

Gucci Guilty Absolute 90ml eau de parfum £ 79

Gucci Guilty Platinum 90ml eau de toilette  £ 62

Gucci Guilty Platinum 50ml eau de toilette £ 74

Gucci Flora 1966 100ml eau de parfum £ 150

Flora by Gucci 75ml eau de parfum £ 90

Flora Gorgeous Gardenia 100ml eau de toilette £ 78

Gucci Bamboo 75ml eau de toilette £ 76

Gucci OUD 75ml eau de parfum £ 135

Gucci Made to Measure 50ml eau de toilette £ 55

Rush 75ml eau de toilette £ 70

Gucci Guilty Absolute Pour Femme 90ml eau de parfum £ 95

Gucci Bloom 150ml eau de parfum £ 125

I would personally say their most famous are Gucci Guilty, Gucci Flora, Gucci Bamboo and Gucci Bloom. All of these names and fragrances personify key semiotic elements of Gucci as a brand. To do this is an obvious move from Gucci as a company, however the way in which the perfumes are portrayed is very important. For customers who cannot afford Gucci’s apparel or any more expensive products, having the perfume lets them have a sneak peak into the world of luxury fashion, therefore the campaigns/adverts for these perfumes are very important and are also ways in which Gucci can show their artistic and collaborative personality.

The latest Gucci Guilty campaign (2016) ‘starring Jared Leto, the story unfolds in Venice, a city that in the past allowed its people to transgress society’s norms, its liberated aura still circling its streets today. Filmed as a set of flashbacks by Glen Luchford, the campaign builds sensual intrigue around an intimate experience between three people.’1

Gucci Bloom’s campaign (2017) also by Glen Luchford gives such an abnormally natural feeling to the viewer as the models, Petra Collins, Dakota Johnson and Hari Nef journey through nature.

“I wanted a rich white floral fragrance, a courageous scent that transports you to a vast garden filled with many flowers and plants, a bouquet of abundance. The garden is as beautiful as women are; colorful, wild, diverse, where there is everything,” Alessandro Michele.

Gucci Flora’s campaign by Chris Cunningham still has his quirky touch, yet is still set in a beautifully etherial meadow and tells a strange story that one wants to know more.

One Gucci Bamboo campaign features a stronger and more powerful performance by Gal Gadot and would empower the viewer and they would want to become the character she is playing.

The most recent campaign for Gucci Bamboo is in keeping with Alessandro’s fantastical tone, and creates a sense of being in a dream and features the calm and etherial tone that is in the first three campaigns that I mentioned and is directed again by Glen Luchford.

I think that a fragrance, especially for a luxury brand such as Gucci, shows the exact representation of the brand that the Creative Director wants to portray. This etherial, natural and somewhat quirky existence that appears within the campaigns I have mentioned, apart from the one featuring Gal Gadot, really embodies what it means to be Gucci. The key signifiers and semiotics of the brand are personified through these fragrance campaigns.

References

1 “Gucci Guilty Director’s Cut” Gucci, 2016. Youtube. Web.

All fragrance figures and information from-

https://www.gucci.com/uk/en_gb/ca/beauty/fragrances-c-beauty-fragrances?utm_medium=cpc&utm_source=google_uk&utm_campaign=coty_gucci_uk_brand_core_exact&utm_term=gucci_perfume

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After carrying out a series of brand analysis’ for Gucci, I felt it was important to carry out a SWOT Analysis. This is because doing so, shows you what is missing from the brand and this allows you to spot a niche spot in the market to create a subbrand. Because I am making a subbrand for Gucci, it is important that I know about its competitors so that my subbrand is effective and unique, this could also allow me to do something that any other brand could do, first. I carried out a SWOT Analysis for Chanel, Dior and Burberry and main competitors as they cover a variety of target markets and share similar price points. I found that there wasn’t particularly a premium brand in the same market as Gucci that shared its eclectic style and seeing the way Chanel, Dior and Burberry are attempting to diversify, in accordance with their brand, it really showed me the gap in the market for a Gucci subbrand.

Please view my Gucci SWOT Analysis in my sketchbook.

Here are my SWOT Analysis’ for my competitors:

SWOT Analysis of Gucci Competitors

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So I obviously began with doing a brief analysis of three different brands: Gucci, Comme Des Garcons and Burberry. However, by the time I had done this, I had already had lots of thoughts about using Gucci as the brand I wanted to base my sub brand on.

I carried out a moodboard on pinterest of what I already know that I like from Gucci as a brand and the image they portray. I found I mostly love their recent collections and imagery from Alessandro Michele, however I do have a love for Tom Ford’s era at Gucci.

I put together a moodboard to show what I loved initially: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/kynzakendalljon/gucci-as-a-brand/

Therefore, I furthered my analysis of Gucci straight away instead of wasting too much time on the other brands. I first did the basic analysis, which is what you can tell about the brand without looking too closely at the brand. Then I carried on with analysing Gucci’s Heritage through it’s semiotics and key visual signifiers. I found this was a good place to start as many of these such as the horse-bit and floral design is what I have always loved through all of Gucci’s collections. This was a good place to start as my mind is more visual, therefore it was building up my vision of what I might like my sub brand to be based on what already exists. 

I also carried out a little moodpboard featuring these key signifiers to relate to my research in my sketchbook. https://www.pinterest.co.uk/kynzakendalljon/gucci-semiotics/

Then I wanted to look closer to what Gucci has to say for themselves and look at how they want to portray themselves. This, I think, was the most important thing I did to clarify what I wanted to do with my subbrand. I looked at their website, because seeing how a brand defines themselves is important because they could or could possibly not be fulfilling the image they want to broadcast. I took some notes from Gucci’s Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility section on their website and then I took the points that interested me the most and did a little brainstorm of how I would like to incorporate them into my project. 

To clarify my thoughts on Gucci as a brand, once I researched further, I did a mind map and brainstorm describing how I viewed Gucci now.

Doing all of this research really helped me evaluate where I needed to go to carry on with my project and how I wanted my Gucci subbrand to be portrayed. So now I am ready to do some more analytical studies on Gucci as a business model and focus on their strengths and weaknesses by carrying out SWOT analysis’s and so on. 

What I know so far:

I would like to focus on a collection that in inspired by Gucci’s natural semiotics and use this to create a sustainable and ‘vegan’ collection that is driven by charity work and focusing on a good business model.

I am happy with where I am at this point and I am ready to move further and be more thorough with my research of Gucci as a business. 

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Trend Forecasting has always seemed like such an alien concept to be because it didn’t used to seem possible that Trend Forecaster’s could possibly know what is going to happen in the future. However, although it is not 100% clear now, after having researched and after having been taught in lectures, the concept makes a lot more sense to me now.

I read quite a bit of the book ‘The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook’ by Martin Raymond, and I took some notes to help me understand the concept more clearly. (These can be found in my sketchbook under the title of ‘Trend Forecasting’.)

Then I started with looking at the WGSN website at the Future Trend Predictions for 2019. I read through each one and took in the information and it was clear that after this, one of them in particular stood out to me.

The Vision 2019: Creative Manifesto really spoke to me as a ‘creative’ and really made me excited for our near future. Another Trend Prediction I particularly liked is Action/Reaction. It’s concept was very futuristic and I reading through and having lots of ideas about my project. I found it really interesting, the in way in which the Future Trends Macro Presentations were laid out. Especially considering how mind-boggling I found the topic initially. They were presented in a simple way that made it clear as to what they were describing, with few words and lots of concisely chosen images. I thought it would be cool to look into doing my own one for this project as an extension of one of the four macro trend boards I will have to create for the submission of this project.

I have written up some notes of what I thought about these two Trend Boards and what I might like to reference in the future.

References

Raymond, Martin. The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd, 2010. Print.

‘Future Trends; Macro Trends 2019: ‘The Vision 2019: Action/Reaction’, …’Creative Manifesto’, …’In Touch’ and …’Common Ground’. WGSN. 2017. Web. 15 April 2018.

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To begin, I found the term ‘Cultural Capital’ difficult to get my head around. However, I did a bit of research to look further into it and it now makes complete sense to me!

I wrote some notes to help me remember:

Bourdieu argued that capital formed the foundation of social life and dictated one’s position within social order. The more capital one has, the more powerful a position one occupies in social life. Bourdieu extended the idea of capital beyond the economic and spoke of it more in the symbolic realm of culture.

Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital refers to the collection of symbolic elements. Such as: skills, tastes, posture, clothing, mannerisms, material belongings, credentials etc. that one acquires through being part of a particular social class. Furthermore, sharing similar forms of cultural capital with others creates a sense of collective identity. However. Bourdieu does speak of cultural capital being a major source of social inequality.

Bourdieu says that cultural capital comes in three forms:

Embodied, such as one’s accent

Objectified, such as a luxury car

Institutionalised, such as credentials and qualifications e.g. a degree

Now that I understand the theory behind the meaning of ‘Cultural Capital’, I can now interpret it into a way in which fits my project and make my own ideas up about what Cultural Capital means to me, both personally, in terms of society and in the business world when representing a brand.

I see Cultural Capital as something that is inevitable in the shaping of society nowadays. This is because the majority of the populations of first world countries especially, judge and value people via this theory. This is because a great percentage of society allows their lives to revolve around trying to better themselves in a variety of ways to increase their quality of life and their hierarchical status in society, this is done by increasing/growing their cultural capital.

Obviously everyone is going to want to have the best quality of life possible for themselves and their loved ones, however, I personally think that the things in which they need to do and have to fulfil this, has been skewed by society’s excessive consumption and greed. The amount they have to have and do to reach a higher ‘status’ is greater.

Furthermore, I think that at this moment in time, lots of the simpler ‘symbolic elements’, of which Bourdieu speaks of, such as education, are getting forgotten and their importance is lessened.

Anyways, enough about my opinions!

I personally think that, when regarding brands, having a strong cultural capital and a strong ‘sense of self’ really improves the way in which customers view the brand. What I mean by that, is if a brand has no meaning or passion for what they are producing, then it is not as ‘attractive’ to customers. When a brand has a history, a passion and a story behind what they are producing, then the target market becomes clearer, therefore customers are attracted to the brand more easily.

I think that I would like to give my sub-brand a strong sense of cultural capital to make it’s production of its good more meaningful.

References

“Cultural Capital.” Routeledgesoc.com. 2016. Web. 19 Mar 2018. http://routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/cultural-capital

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My initial thoughts about the brief:

So after receiving the brief, I first thought that this project might be lacking in creativity due to the importance of business related analysis and research. However, after having thought further about it, I think that the project is more suited to me than I first thought.

The way in which people in my field would go about beginning the research would include and perhaps even begin with the use of visuals.

Defining and researching a brand can be easy to describe verbally when thinking about the business aspects of the brand. However, trying to describe a brand’s values, target market and characteristics of their style is close to impossible without the use of extensive and precise visual descriptors.

Something I really like about the brand is that we are able to produce a multiplatform approach to our campaigns for our sub-brands. Furthermore, the fact that the outcomes that we need to produce are quite precise but allow for creativity and to be passionate about our project as they are all individual, is really good.

I will begin with looking at the list of brands and seeing whether any of these really interest me to base my project on those, however, at first glance, I have a feeling that I may branch out from this list.