Levi Strauss and World

Levi Strauss and World
From Denim a Rainbow of Possibilities

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Jeans are 138 Years old today

Happy 138th, Blue Jeans!

NEW YORK, May 19, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Blue jeans, the ubiquitous cotton denim trouser, is 138-years-young today. On May 20, 1873, Levi Strauss and Nevada tailor Jacob Davis were granted U.S. Patent Number 139,121 for their use of rivets to add strength to denim workpants. Over a century later, blue jeans continue to rivet consumers and designers around the world. Today, U.S. consumers own an average of 7 pairs of denim jeans, according the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor™ survey, and the appeal of denim jeans shows no signs of going out of vogue.

What began as workwear during the California gold Rush has evolved into a workhorse for the apparel industry; with current price points ranging from around $10.00, to upwards of $10,000.00 for a pair of custom-designed denim jeans. The 2011 global denim industry is an estimated $54 billion at retail, with demand growing steadily at 5% to 6%, according to a report by the ATA Journal for Asia on Textiles and Apparel.

Responses to the Cotton Incorporated Lifestyle Monitor survey show that consumers are true-blue in their dedication to denim. "According to responses to our most recent survey, over three-quarters of consumers love or enjoy wearing denim," says Melissa Bastos, Manager, Market Research at Cotton Incorporated. "For women 13-to-34, that number jumps to 81%," she adds.
Additional statistics on denim and a range of other consumer and industry categories can be found at www.cottonlifestylemonitor.com

HIGHLIGHTS OF DENIM'S FASHION EVOLUTION:

1930s

Work, war and film were influential in shaping the shape of women's trouser-wearing. In the 1939 film, The Women, Manhattan socialites visit a dude ranch, in full, high-waisted, stiff-denimed dungarees. Vogue and Mademoiselle both deemed denim appropriate for dude ranching and Levi's had already jumped onto the trend with their short-lived Lady Levi's line in 1935. But jeans were less a fashion statement and more a costume of Western color.

1940s

During World War II, Rosie the Riveter was an icon representing women who took up the labor slack while men were fighting overseas. In 1943, a then-unknown model named Betty Bacall modeled Rosie's signature denim coveralls on the cover of Harper's Bazaar.Perhaps influenced by Rosie, Wellesley College students felt the freedom to wear blue jeans on campus in 1944. But, then a "scandalous" photo of denim clad Wellesley Girls appeared in an issue of Life magazine. Dubbed "the sloppy look," it created a national stir and set ladies jeans-wearing back a good decade.

1950s

In 1954, Grace Kelly reclined on a sofa in Hitchcock's "Rear Window," wearing a pair of jeans and reading an attire-appropriate book about traveling in the Himalayas. As Jimmy Stewart dozes off, Kelly discards the book and switches to the latest issue of Bazaar, making a silent but powerful connection between fashion and denim.

Thanks to "The Wild One" (1953) and "Rebel Without A Cause" (1955), a pervasive association with blue jeans and juvenile delinquency had entered the public consciousness. Thanks James Dean and Marlon Brando! So widespread was the detrimental denim mindset, that the Denim Council was formed in 1956 to combat declining sales.

1960s
Denim pants are dubbed "jeans" by the Baby Boomer generation. The name has its origins in the French phrase bleu de Genes (literally, "blue of Genoa"), and harks back to the first known uses of denim pants – as a uniform for Genoese sailors.
In 1961, the Denim Council's efforts paid off with a major public relations coup: the newly-formed Peace Corps allowed its first 200 volunteers to wear jeans. This ushered in a new era across the board. It was a brave new world of positive revolution, rock-and-roll and, to bring the topic full circle, women's rights.
1970s
When Vogue featured blue jeans on their cover in the early 1970s, denim received its official sartorial sanction.
1980s
In 1988, as Anna Wintour picked up the reins as Editor of Vogue, her very first cover featured a young model wearing a $10,000 Christian Lacroix shirt matched with a pair of Guess (?) blue jeans. The message conveyed was that jeans can hold their own in the world of high fashion.

SOURCE Cotton Incorporated



Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Ann Rohosy is new VP and President of Docker' brand

Levi Strauss & Co has promoted Anne Rohosy as executive vice president and president of its global Dockers brand, tasking her with all product, marketing and business operations.She reports to Levi Strauss president and CEO John Anderson, and moves into the role after two years as a senior vice president, overseeing Levi's brand commercial wholesale operations in the Americas. Prior to joining the San Francisco based company she spent 15 years with Nike.
"With more than 20 years of US and international retail experience, Anne has the leadership and strategic expertise to drive Dockers forward and continue the brand's momentum in revitalising the khaki category," Anderson said."Anne is well-known in the retail industry for her strong business sense and tremendous relationships with retailers, making her the ideal choice to lead the Dockers brand during this exciting time." Dockers products are sold in more than 50 countries around the world across a variety of stores, ranging from Macy's and Kohl's to Barney's and Urban Outfitters.



Thursday, May 12, 2011

Levi's Healthcare line

The link that follows will take you to some very professional student work which promotes the idea and branding for a healthcare line for men with the Levi's flair.

http://www.thedieline.com/blog/2011/5/12/student-spotlight-levis-strauss-co-mens-healthcare-line.html

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Levi's involved in first paperless coupon

Platform SCVNGR has teamed up with American Express and Levi’s to create the first paperless daily deal redemption system. If you’ve ever purchased a Groupon or LivingSocial daily deal, you’ve probably gone through the awkward process of redeeming your coupon. You have to print out the daily deal, remember to bring the printout with you and give it to the cashier, who may or may not be trained on how to redeem it. Plus, pulling out a coupon isn’t necessarily something you want to do on a date.

SCVNGR and American Express believe that they have found the solution. Starting today, SCVNGR’s daily deal platform LevelUp now features an option to sync your LevelUp account to your AmEx card. Once synced, all you need to do to redeem the daily deals you purchase through LevelUp is swipe your card. There’s no need to bring a coupon with you. You don’t even have to tell the cashier that you bought a daily deal coupon. AmEx automatically tracks and credits your deal. AmEx Vice President of Gobal Marketing Capabilities David Wolf says the LevelUp integration is powered by AmEx’s Smart Offer Engine, the same platform that powered Foursquare’s “spend $5, save $5″ pilot program at SXSW.

AmEx links to LevelUp’s APIs so that you don’t have to think about redeeming your daily deal. It’s automatically done for you when you swipe your card at the store.The pilot program launches today in San Francisco with Levi’s. Users that purchase daily deals from Levi’s through LevelUp will automatically get their discounts when they use their AmEx card at the Levi’s store in Union Square.

LevelUp differs from Groupon, LivingSocial and other daily deal sites through its use of game mechanics to increase customer loyalty. Every time you purchase and use a daily deal on LevelUp, you have the option to buy another daily deal from the same brand. In the case of Levi’s, level one gets you $10 of merchandise for $20, level two gets you $10 of merchandise for $30 and level three gets you $10 of merchandise for $50.




Saturday, May 7, 2011

Doug Sweeny Leaves Levis

Doug Sweeny is departing his post as VP-global marketing at Levi Strauss & Co. to become president of WPP-owned agency Y&R's West Coast operations. Mr. Sweeny will oversee the network's San Francisco and Irvine offices in tandem with Y&R West's new chief creative officer, Joe Kayser.

Doug Sweeny The move marks a return for Mr. Sweeny to the agency world, and a reunion for him and Mr. Kayser, who were previously partners at Omnicom Group's TBWA/Chiat/Day in San Francisco. There they ran the global business for Adidas. Previously, he was an account director working on Saturn at Publicis Groupe's Hal Riney in San Francisco. "We had a great partnership, and we worked well together and complemented each other really well," Mr. Sweeny said of working with Mr. Kayser. He attributes the opportunity to work with him again and improvements in Y&R's creative product as his reasons for making the jump from Levi's.

For the past four years, Mr. Sweeny helped lead global marketing for the retailer, where he was behind the global "Go Forth" campaign. He plans to wrap up at Levi's, which spends an estimated $100 million globally on advertising, within the next couple of weeks and start at Y&R in early June. Mr. Sweeny replaces John Berg, who departed his post as Y&R West president in March. "The very first conversation Joe and I had about who would be a suitable partner for our West Coast business ... he mentioned Doug, and I had Doug at the top of my list as well," said Tom Sebok, president-CEO of Y&R North America.

The installation of new management in the office is part of a goal to elevate Y&R's presence on the West Coast. "Overall our agency needs a far greater degree of visibility than it has today," Mr. Sebok said. Clients handled by that office include Chevron, Mattel, Jenny Craig Disney, and Citrix. More broadly, the agency network -- which has been suffering the loss of a slew of clients in the agency's New York office -- has been making management changes, like bringing in new CEO David Sable and New York Chief Creative Officer Jim Elliott from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

Levi's didn't immediately return a request for comment about Mr. Sweeny's departure. The marketer is going through changes of its own, including the launch of its first global ad campaign later this year, and a restructuring of its marketing operation that has brought on new new Global Chief Marketing Officer Rebecca Van Dyck. It remains to be seen whether the arrival of Ms. Van Dyck and the departure of Ms. Sweeny will have any affect on Levi's agency relationships, which include Wieden & Kennedy and OMD leading global creative and media respectively.





Sunday, May 1, 2011

Levi's and the Like button

Facebook's 'Like' button becomes force in e-commerce


By Mike mailto:Swift-mswift@mercurynews.com

Whether you just bought an airline ticket or a pair of jeans online, chances are an Internet search preceded the transaction. Now Facebook hopes to make its vast web of online social connections another central ingredient in the complicated dance between retailer and consumer.
One year after Facebook began distributing its "Like" button to millions of websites -- an average of 10,000 additional websites a day add the button or other Facebook tools -- the Palo Alto social network says it is becoming a force in online commerce. Facebook points to partnerships with companies like Levi's, which has a Facebook Like button positioned next to every article of clothing on Levi.com, and Ticketmaster, whose website includes a Facebook app that lets people see whether their friends have already bought a ticket to concerts they are interested in attending.

Just as people have always talked to their friends before making a significant purchase, "your mode of discovery online is starting to look more like your mode of discovery offline," said Dan Rose, a former Amazon.com executive who is vice president of partnerships and platform marketing at Facebook.

Facebook and Ticketmaster say that when the ticket retailers' customers post a specific event they are attending or might attend to their friends' Facebook News Feed, it generates $5.30 of direct ticket sales.

Meanwhile, a forthcoming  report from Harris Interactive and CityGrid Media will say that the Like button is already trumping reviews on websites such as Yelp as the primary way that people show support for businesses online.Facebook took another major e-commerce step Tuesday when it rolled out a trial "Deals" service in the Bay Area and four other U.S. cities to compete with Groupon and other online discount deal websites. The Like button is a prominent feature.

Still, some skeptics say the Like button won't ever become the mainstay of e-commerce that search is. A recent survey of online retailers by the market research firm Forrester found that 59 percent said the returns from social marketing remain unclear, while just 28 percent said social marketing strategies had helped their business grow.
"The problem is the fundamental flaw of this whole expectation. People think that shopping is social, because teenagers go to the mall in groups," said Sucharita Mulpuru, the Forrester analyst who wrote the recent skeptical report about Facebook's future in e-commerce. "But most shopping is not social. People don't go to Walmart in groups. They don't go to the grocery store in groups."

While Mulpuru says there are niches where Facebook can become a major force in e-commerce -- ticketing for example, because concerts, baseball games and other events are inherently social -- those successes will be the exception rather than the rule.

Facebook, she said, has already had enough time to prove its assertion that it will someday produce a Zynga of retail, referring to the San Francisco social game-maker that grew into a multibillion-dollar company through its association with the social network.
"At some point, you've got to show people the money," Mulpuru said.

Facebook and its partners counter that consumers who arrive on the websites of retailers, media sites and other Facebook partners are more deeply engaged. For example, people clicking on clothing retailer American Eagle from Facebook spent an average 57 percent more money than people who arrived on the website through other means, such as a Google (GOOG) search, while Rose said people who arrive on newspaper and other media websites via a link shared on Facebook are more likely to read to the end of an article.

Facebook celebrated the first anniversary of its distribution of the Like button to other websites on April 21. Facebook declined to update an earlier count of 2.5 million websites using the Like button and other social applications, such as the ability to login to a website using Facebook credentials. But an average of 10,000 websites a day in the past year connecting to Facebook would mean the Like button and other Facebook tools are now on more than 3.5 million websites.

Mulpuru says that for most retailers, Facebook will be most important in making consumers more aware of a brand, rather than driving actual sales, and some retailers, including Levi's, say that is how they are using Facebook at this point.


"We really feel like it is attracting a new consumer to Levi.com," particularly younger and more "fashion-forward" consumers, said Megan O'Connor, director of digital and social marketing for Levi's. For example, the company's new "Ex-Girlfriend Jeans" -- super skinny jeans for men -- got 4,000 Facebook likes on the first day the jeans went on sale.

"We believe it will drive sales, " O'Connor said of the Like button. "We are really looking at it as a way for consumers to interact with the brand, to tell their friends about the brand, and really get the word out about what Levi's is passionate about."

Contact Mike Swift at 408-271-3648. Follow him at Twitter.com/swiftstories.