Neuromarketing: Could francesca's Level-Up?

I research the brand francesca's more excessively by going undercover in their store and taking note of how the company expresses their brand.

This retail audit was based on how different store elements such as the smell, light, colors, presentation, packaging, and staff had an influence of the different senses smell, touch, audio, sight, and taste.

For the Neuromarketing Strategy, I made sure to include:

• A description of the neuroscience behind the brain.

• And how this information can be used to incorporate a new marketing tactic in order to improve the brand.

The brand described itself as the follow:

“Our boutiques offer an eclectic mix of carefully-curated clothing, bright baubles, bold accessories, and playful gifts that are as fun to give as they are to receive. Boutiques reveal an array of new arrivals almost daily, so you’ll always discover something special and amazing on every visit. And because we are a boutique, we only carry a few of each item, so everything you find is uniquely yours. You can kiss seeing your outfit twin at the party goodbye!” (francesca's, About Us, 2020)

Retail Experience Recommendations

As some might say 'people buy experiences, not products'. Although francesca's is nothing like those stores, they do have some potential to step up and create better in-store experiences (Roy, 2020).

Flaw 1: Colors

Even though the store colors yellow and black used in the store in combination with a warm hue light, the store does not create contrast. It leads to a lack of contrast between products and their environment, making the store almost monochromatic. As the products are also in the same color-families, there is nothing that visually stands out.

Recommendation: Use blue cooler hue lighting or change brand colors to a lighter tone

to create more contrast between the environment and products.

Flaw 2: Brand Audience

They already show pre-styled mannikins resonating with individual lifestyles. However, one of the problems is that they do not show a specific target audience within their stores that people can identify with. It is essential to show actual pictures of people wearing the clothing and doing something related to that lifestyle, preferably having one person in the picture.

Recommendation: Use more images inspiring the right target audience.

Flaw 3: There Is No Brand Story

As the brand represents other smaller different brands, there is not really a story around the brand francesca's that stand out to the audience. We as humans put essence on objects but also stories.

Recommendation: Compelling stories on the origin and brand personality could be

displayed through window dressing in the retail experience (Khan, 2018). Another way

would be to make the in-store staff storytellers and true brand representatives. While

giving advice, employees should know the story behind different products, which helps

to put essence on the product. Sharing previous experiences from other customers with

the products, using word of mouth, indirectly, could make the story more personal and

complete (Khandelwal, 2020; Johnson & Ghuman, 2020).

Flaw 4: No Surprises

The brand does a great job of decreasing the pain of spending money; however, there should also be a pleasure, which is often defined by surprising random elements (Johnson & Ghuman, 2020).

Recommendation: One suggestion would be to give smaller branded gifts at the

checkout when a certain amount is spent. As francesca's product assortment is quite

diverse, these gifts could vary from facemasks, small notebooks, cleaning wipes,

koozies, and magnets (Fries, 2019).

Another way of a surprising element is to create an Instagram Booth. 68% of people

share experiences that reflect their identity, and this is an excellent way for vintage,

casual, and bohemian lovers to share them (Rogers, 2018; Khandelwal, 2020).

Flaw 5: Old Fashioned

francesca's has not really adopted an omni-channel concept, nor is it digitally savvy, due to its strategy to retain an old-fashion boutique-style store, technology offers opportunities to come up with unique experimental retail store experiences.

Recommendation: Mobile apps could help people with a system 2 mind focus on the

right information as well as with the help of beacons, stimulate system 1 with promotion

notifications. New technology touch points different dimension walking through the

stores; interactive displays can be used for storytelling and more practical reasons (Silva,

2017; Khandelwal, 2020).

Neuromarketing Recommendations

1. Brand Recognition

Our “mental model’, better known as our thought process, takes in the different advertisement consciously and unconsciously through different senses and interprets them with anchors. In order to be remembered, brands need to create strong references, a strong brand identity that separates them from the competition. People have specific feelings and associations when they see certain shapes and colors, helping brands to distinguish from the competitions.

Current Situation: francesca's business model based on franchising, each store has a

different-style boutique adjusted to the taste of the owner. Francesca’s currently has

three different retail themes, and a website theme that does not match with any of the

retails experiences. The online branding of francesca's is too close to that of

competitors, using the same colors and going for fonts that are more in the handwritten

categories.

Recommendations: It is recommended to use the colors Millennial Pink and Lemon

Meringue Yellow in combination with black and white. As explained before, yellow is

associated with creativity, happiness, and black with sophistication and elegance. Pink,

on the other hand, stands for femininity, playfulness, and immaturity, which definitely

reflects the pictures that francesca’s show online (francesca's, 2020; Ferreira, 2019) It is

also recommended to take a different font for the logo, something that differentiates

from the handwritten classic styles. The new style chosen still gives a boutique feeling

because of the rounded edges. A more cohesive look for the stores should be applied.

2. Brand Personality & Message

Neural coupling is a natural process of interpreting the words and their meanings in our brain in a communication context. For brands, this is quite a challenge as they cannot adjust their messages to every individual; therefore it is easier to communicate to a group of people with similar communication styles and interests. The brand personality is often defined with a set of personal characteristics, which defines the brand itself. Brand personality directs the voice, tone, and style through all different types of brand communications.

Current situation: francesca’s only communicates through social media posting the same

content very much oriented on a typical girl having fun. All content is staged, showing

different outfit options or specific poses of models having fun, drinking milkshakes,

taking pictures on the beach, being at festivals, and celebrating parties (francesca's,

2020). The tone of voice is very happy but very sales oriented. They also have a negative

association with being a fast-fashion brand (Howland, 2019). Comparing it to the

competition, and other more established fashion brands, the the online positioning of

francesca’s’ “exclusive boutique styles” is not really reflected by the pre-designed

options that people can purchase (francesca's, 2020). Some generations would say that

francesca’s is not authentic or inclusive based on their content.

Recommendations: francesca's should target Millennials and Generation Z Both

generation groups are all about self-expression, being truthful, realistic, in inclusive

ways. They want raw images, representing all different ethics groups, and brands to start

a discussion point for sensitive topics. Both generations might associate (Hoefel &

Francis, 2018). The generations also place value on real recommendations, less sales

focusses messages and creations of influencers.

The brand personality should evolve around playfulness, inclusive, diversity, and

exclusivity while being authentic. The company can also put more essence on the origin

of the boutique in general, which originates from Italy and France. Francesca is an

Italian name, which fits in perfectly with this new association theme (Majer, n.d.;

OneStepRetailSolutions., 2012; Johnson & Ghuman, 2020)

3. Brand Exposure

The mere exposure effect is described as a phenomenon where the more people see something, the more we like it, especially when we are not explicitly thinking consciously. (Inoue, Yagi, & Nobuya, 2017). This is why some brands actively use advertising aggressively to be on top of the consumers' minds. Every time we see an advertisement, our perceptions slightly change towards this brand (Johnson & Ghuman, 2020).

Current situation: francesca's focus is mainly on organic and in-boutique marketing.

There is a minimal usage of traditional television and print advertising and online paid

advertisements, trusting their loyal customer to use “word of mouth” compared to

other brands (francesca’s, 2013).

Recommendations: francesca's should start to run different advertisements

campaigns across different platforms promoting the new brand personality throughout the customer journey. People like the essence of stories, especially when they evolve around an individual person (Woodside, Sood, & Miller, 2008). One idea is to create content and a storytelling campaign showing the roots of the boutique stores in Italy and France. It will revolve around individuals being in the older parts of Milan or Paris, wearing francesca’s clothing, exploring the city, getting in special situations, and having the right outfits to shine and be unique. This could be in the form of a paid campaign aired on television and YouTube showing different stories in the same format.

4. Fear Marketing & Experiential Marketing

People, especially being in system 1, are very responsive to fear marketing because of FOMO, the fear of missing out. One classic example is the limited-edition collections that Nike and Adidas create with its sneakers (Turner, 2019). As francesca’s is already having different items in each store, the brand can put more essence on this by highlighting the unique items. Influencers campaigns using subtextual claims can be used to showcase these unique products (Guitteau, 2020).

Making positive and exceptional memories with brands is very important, especially when they are interactive as people’s senses are triggered more broadly in the experience. Investing in innovative experimental marketing campaigns helps to bring a brand to life and stay on top of the target audience’s mind. One example is that francesca’s could have a road trip campaign where francesca’s drives around in a Volkswagen Van offering free ice-cream while having a small boutique store. Once people get free ice-cream, they also receive a personal discount code to spend in one of the francesca’s in that city.

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Marketing Analysis & Recommendations.

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