NEW YORK WHOLESALE

Jun 10 2012 By Russell Findlay, Sunday Mail

POLICE hunting shopping molls Annette Daniel and Jean McGovern fear the thieves have fled to Spain.

The career criminals decided to sun themselves on the Costa del Sol while the heat is on at home.

We told last week how Daniel, McGovern and three gang members were being probed over a £24,000 designer dress theft from Harrods.

CCTV images of the gang at work in the posh store in London’s Knightsbridge have been passed to the Metropolitan Police.

But the prime suspects in the robbery have now fled the UK for Marbella.

One source said: “The heat caused by the Harrods job is intense and they decided to get out as quickly as possible.

“They’ll have to return at some point but I don’t think they will be in a hurry. If I was a shopkeeper in Marbella, I’d be keeping my eyes peeled for a pair of middle-aged Scottish women.”

Marbella has a string of designer stores including Carte Ingles in Puerto Banus, which carries top lines such as Prada and Tommy Hilfiger.

Last week we revealed four Roberto Cavalli and Ralph Lauren frocks had been nicked from Harrods. The store – feared by thieves for its stringent security – didn’t notice they were missing until the following day.

Daniel, 50, and McGovern, 45, who both have lengthy criminal records, are suspected of conducting the theft with gang members Roberta Burke, 48, Julie Tomlin, 32, and John Thomson.

The pair – members of Glasgow crime clans – run a team of professional thieves who travel around the UK.

Some brand names are recognized the world over. Overseas expansion is the dream for many brands that are looking for new opportunities outside their traditional markets. There are several approaches brands can take when doing this: export their existing marketing strategies wholesale to a new audience, make subtle changes to appeal to new customers without losing their original unique selling points or to attempt to translate their product entirely to appeal to a very different culture. There is no one method that works, as the following examples show: sometimes success or failure can come down to some very basic market research.

Ford sells the Focus back to the US

In 2012, Ford launched their first global car, a version of the re-engineered Ford Focus. While the Focus had enjoyed huge popularity in Europe, sales had not been strong in North America, partly because the stylish second generation model that had taken Europe by storm had never been launched in the US. The new model integrated many of the European aesthetics, plus several high-spec, high-tech features.

In North America, Ford had a bigger challenge than in Europe, where the style was already familiar. With little public awareness of the new look, Ford launched a more American-friendly sedan model alongside the more revolutionary European-style hatchback. Advertising concentrated on the aerodynamic features of the new design and fuel efficiency as a way of winning over the middle-American demographic. They also tried to attract a younger, more tech-savvy customer with a social media campaign featuring Doug, a sock puppet, which attracted 45,000 Likes on Facebook and around 2 million You Tube views (the campaign has since been pulled).

Did the marketing campaigns work?

In Europe, where the launch challenge wasn’t so great, sales have been strong, with the new Focus passing the 250,000 sales milestone

In the US Ford says that “February [is] on track to be best sales month in more than a decade [and the] share of high-end SEL and Titanium Focus models are up to 26 percent.” The move towards a more luxurious, high-tech spec seems to be paying off.

Nissan Micra Star of India Campaign

While Ford opted to move towards integration of their European and North American styles, Nissan’s Star of India campaign embraced Indian culture in a hugely successful social media campaign to raise awareness of their Micra model, which has sold over 6 million units worldwide but had only recently been introduced to India.

The campaign teamed up with Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor to offer fans the chance to star alongside him in a 3-minute film, the Star of India, (featuring an epic Nissan Micra car chase) if they uploaded a clip of them dancing, voted for by Facebook users. The Facebook page gained over 500,000 Likes, more than any other car company in India.

Foster’s Gold

While some brands change their advertising to reflect cultural differences in their marketing, others go further and change their entire product. Foster’s lager is not popular in its native Australia, where it has only been infrequently promoted in ten years, and its premium Foster’s Gold line isn’t even available there (it is made in Europe under rights owned by Heineken International). However, that doesn’t stop the $12 million celebrity-endorsed overseas marketing campaign from focusing on a mix of Australian down-to-earth humor and modern glamor, and the lager continues to be popular in Europe, coming second only to Carling in the UK by sales.

Coca-Cola’s regional ads

The Coca-Cola brand is instantly recognizable around the world. Part of the secret to their success is exporting their product as a concentrate; overseas bottling companies then add sweeteners and filtered water, which gives it a distinct flavor in each country. Some regions even have their own products based on local tastes, such as the lemon-and-lime drink Limca in India. Marketing is also very region-specific, for example having a Diwali-themed holiday commercial in India, or commercials that reflect local music tastes in Europe. Coca-Cola’s strong 6% global increase in 2011, boosted by developing market sales, helped it to remain as the leader in soft drinks in the world.

Dassani’s abandoned European expansion

On paper, Coca-Cola’s bottled water brand Dasani should have had a trouble-free European launch, given Coke’s experience with overseas markets. In 2004, the plan was to use the UK as a launch pad for the rest of Europe.

Early advertising used the same taglines ‘Bottled spunk’ and ‘Can’t live without spunk’ that had been used in the US to highlight Dasani’s youthful, healthy image.

Except that in the UK, ‘spunk’ has entirely different connotations, being slang for ‘semen’. The ads were quickly pulled.

The differences in US and European cultures became even more problematic. In the UK, 88% of bottled water sold comes from natural mineral or spring sources, and Dasani’s labeling stated that it was from ‘pure’ sources. When the UK press discovered that Dasani was not from a spring or glacier, but purified mains water from Sidcup, a suburb of London, there was a public outcry, with the tabloid press running headlines like ‘The Real Sting’, a play on Coke’s slogan, or pointing out that Thames Water, who serve the area, sell 500ml of tap water for 0.03p, as opposed to Dasani’s 95p for 550ml. The Food Standards Agency began an investigation into Dasani’s labeling.

Things went from bad to worse as it emerged that water production had become contaminated by a potentially carcinogenic bromate. Coke took all 500,000 bottles off the shelves and abandoned the European launch, which has not as yet been rescheduled.

What can we learn from this?

• There is no one ‘right’ way to advertise a product in a new market.
• Often, brands will make changes to the products themselves to appeal to variations in taste or lifestyle.
• Successful marketing will take into account local customs, interests or sensitivities.
• Market research into local cultural differences is key to success, even for large brands used to dealing with overseas markets.
• Marketing campaigns can be exported wholesale, but often local voice-overs or slight changes may make them more familiar to audiences. For example, in the identical European Ford Focus television ads, shots are edited to make the car appear to be driving on the left in the UK.
• Failure to take regional differences into account can be highly damaging to a product.
 

TEL AVIV — It's a bright Saturday morning and shopkeepers at the trendy Tel Aviv Port shopping mall are bracing for the thousands of Israeli families about to descend upon the city's busiest outdoor retail promenade.

But among the first visitors many Saturdays is a city inspector, who goes store to store issuing $200 citations to business owners for violating Tel Aviv's ordinance against conducting commerce on the Jewish Sabbath.

Small-shop owners fire off cellphone text messages to warn one another that the inspector is making the rounds; then they chase out customers and shut their doors until he passes. Larger chains shrug off the ticket as a cost of business, far overshadowed by the profits they stand to make. A single pair of jeans at the Levi's store costs more than the fine.

Hoping to cash in on Israelis' growing affluence and lust for shopping, malls, retailers, restaurants and cinemas are throwing open their doors on Saturdays. But the trend butts up against longtime government restrictions and infuriates religious groups that want the day preserved as one of rest.

Though national law prohibits employing Jews on Saturday, enforcement has been sporadic, usually depending on the religious conviction of the sitting labor minister, according to public policy expert Guy Ben-Porat at Ben-Gurion University. Some cities also have laws against conducting business on Saturday, though Supreme Court rulings have upheld the right of certain types of commerce, including gas stations and cinemas.

It's among the many secular-religious debates dividing Israelis. But while most such clashes end up at the government's doorstep, the battle over shopping on the Sabbath is largely being dictated by the pocketbook, as retailers balance potential profits with a backlash, or boycotts, by the ultra-Orthodox.

On one side are secular and religiously tolerant consumers and business owners, who have reaped much of the benefit of Israel's recent economic growth and view the country as a modern, Western-leaning society along the lines of the United States or much of Europe.

"Tel Aviv calls itself the 'city that never sleeps,'" said Nirit Oren-Sternberg, owner of a designer home furnishings store at the Port. "So it's outrageous that we get fined for being open on Saturday. Israelis love shopping. They work hard all week and this gives them an opportunity to shop on the weekend. If someone finds that offensive then they don't have to come."

The crowds that pack the Port and the 30 other malls now open Saturdays around the country suggest that many Israelis agree. On average, retailers who open on Saturday say the day accounts for 40% of their weekly sales. As many as half a million Israelis hit the malls every Saturday, according to industry estimates.

"Saturday can be a massive day," said Ofer Shechter, chief executive of ProMall, which manages 35 malls, half of which are now open on Saturday. "The motivation is money."

On the other side are leaders of Israel's small but politically influential ultra-Orthodox community, known as haredim. They point to biblical commands about observing the Sabbath and ask: If Israel doesn't honor them, who will?

"We have no right to the land of Israel without observing the Torah and its commandments," said Shmuel Pappenheim, a spokesman for an umbrella group of haredi organizations. "If we don't follow it and preserve the Sabbath, we might as well give up our claim and give it to the Arabs."

Haredi leaders are seeking to slow the trend of shops opening on Saturdays by flexing their own economic muscle. The community has enjoyed success on some issues, pressuring private bus companies to provide separate seating for men and women and phone makers to offer so-called kosher cellphones that restrict Internet access and text messaging.

With an estimated $1.5 billion in annual buying power, the haredi community set up the Shabbat Committee in 2006 to monitor Sabbath observation and boycott businesses that ran afoul of its rules.

Their biggest target so far is businessman Dudi Weissman, who operates a chain of 24-hour markets called AM:PM. He also owns a supermarket chain, Shefa Shuk, that does about 40% of its business with the haredim.

Though AM:PM stores have always remained closed on Saturday in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods, the Shabbat Committee demanded that Weissman close all of his stores on the Sabbath. When he refused, they called for a boycott of his supermarkets. Since then, some of the stores have shut down, though company officials have said the closures were unrelated to the boycott.

Weissman declined to comment, as did leaders of the Shabbat Committee. To date, most of his AM:PM stores remain open on Saturdays, leading even supporters of observing the Sabbath to question whether the effort succeeded.

"Boycotts are ineffective," said Yakov Halperin, head of a mall-based optometry chain that closes all of its 130 offices on Saturday, even though it costs the company significant revenue. "They work for a limited time, but then they break down because the religious public is not united."

Still, there is a chilling effect. Haifa-based Cinemall, a large shopping complex on the outskirts of the port city, is considering becoming the latest mall to open on Saturdays, perhaps this fall. But the owner is hesitating, in part out of personal religious beliefs, a mall manager said. Business rivals noted that he also owns a supermarket chain that could be vulnerable to a boycott.

Religious activists have succeeded in keeping most malls that are in city centers and near residential neighborhoods closed. Nearly all the shopping centers currently open on Saturday are in industrial zones or along the city edges. In religious cities, like Jerusalem, only a few restaurants, cinemas and gas stations dare to open.

But experts predict more shops will open on Saturdays as competition intensifies.

"If you look at the trends, secularization is winning big time in this case," said Ben-Porat, who has studied the intersection of religion and business for years. "Just 20 years ago you could hardly find anything open in the country on Saturday."

He said the trend was bolstered in the 1990s, when Israel shifted away from socialism and experienced an influx of more than 1 million Russian immigrants, many of whom were secular or non-Jewish.

"Ultimately this is an issue that is moving away from the political realm," Ben-Porat said. "It's really being decided by profits, not ideology and not public policy."

edmund.sanders@latimes.com

Batsheva Sobelman of The Times' Jerusalem bureau contributed to this report.