Stuart Elliot of the New York Times recently wrote about how Tumi Holdings is challenging the luxury luggage industry’s common marketing practice of using the most recognizable celebrities as brand endorsers.
I had never heard of Tumi before this article (why would I? I’m not a high-class world-traveler…yet), but I have definitely heard of some of the company’s celebrity-laden competition. Huge, world players such as Coach, Louis Vuitton, and Samsonite occupy this space and most of them use well known celebrities to communicate their brand’s exclusivity and luxuriousness.
Tumi, however, is taking a much more interesting approach at this. They’re challenging whether or not their target audience, or “global citizens” as Tumi describes them, identify more with mega-stardom or more attainable success within specific industries.
I imagine that Tumi’s hope is that their “global citizen” target customer who views their advertisements would ask himself, “What makes them famous?” and reason, “I have a moment. Let me Google them.” Upon doing so, they’d find out that Novak Djokovic, one of Tumi’s B-list celebrity endorsers, is ranked world no. 1 by the Association of Tennis Professionals. Of course the ideal scenario is that the customer gets lost in google’s labyrinth of information and somehow connects all of that time and energy spent back to Tumi–that’s the kind brand engagement that companies dream of.
Agent Obvious asks, “What if the target customer dismisses the B-list endorser turns to the Angelina Jolie Louis Vuitton advertisement out of sheer face-recognition?”
I think that is a risk Tumi is willing to take. They are already miles behind industry leaders in terms of market share and revenue, so I’d say that they’re looking for any way to differentiate themselves from the market leaders and establish a deeper psychological connection with their consumers.
They’re hoping that consumers believe it easier to achieve success as a business executive of a Fortune 500 company, like Tumi endorser Paolo Ferrari of Pirelli, than it is to become a movie or pop-star. If Tumi can position themselves closer to where their target consumers envision themselves, it might spell success for the 28-year old firm.
It would be equivalent to Reebok partnering with a college basketball star who didn’t get drafted to the NBA, but accomplished notable professional feats and retained his basketball skills well enough to lead his local intramural team to a championship.
I plan on following Tumi for a few quarters to see if their new ad campaign has any traction and raises their quarterly performance. What do you think of their strategy? Comment below!