A BIT OF HISTORY

As of 2005, Levi Strauss and company had three brands. They are Levis brand, Dockers and the Levi Signature brand. Levis brand had the red tab versions at $35 per pair, Type one at up to $95 and Vintage jeans which sold for up to $220 in upscale stores like Neiman Marcus. ‘A style for every story’ campaign was introduced in 2005 to again build and reinforce awareness of the brand. The Signature brand was reserved for the discount market and was launched in 2003. The line includes denim and non-denim fashion for men, women and children. The jeans were priced from $21-$23 and all products are sold through stores like Wal-mart. 31% of all jeans are purchased at mass retailers and LS&Co. is not prepared to leave those sales on the table. In light of the popularity of the sport within the target market, they recruited Jimmie Johnson, a NASCAR driver to promote this brand. In 2005, Levis also began sponsoring the Soapbox Derby. Levi's ‘Eco"-branded jeans were introduced in 2006, made primarily with organic cotton or recycled denim and distributed in recycled packaging.

In November of 2006, the current president, Anderson took over. He joined the company in 1979 and held positions around the world. His vision was clearly a global one. By 2007, Levis Strauss turned a corner to profitability after nine of the ten previous years had reported declines. Its total annual sales were just over $4 billion ($3 billion less than the peak performance of the mid 1990s). Anderson wanted to balance the struggle between keeping LS&Co. a private global brand with understanding the needs of local consumers. He considered digital marketing to be an exciting tool to accomplish those priorities. He gathered together a team of globally minded people some of whom had experience in apparel and others who had widely diverging experience. For example, he hired Blake Jorgenson of Yahoo as CFO and Jaime Cohen Szluc from Eastman Kodak to head marketing.

For the first two years of his tenure President Anderson worked to take care of the basics at LS&Co. In mid 2008, a new global advertising campaign was unveiled with the ‘Live Life Unbuttoned’ tagline. It focused on the traditional 501s with the button fly and it was the first world wide coordinated advertising campaign. It was very successful in elevating and reinforcing the Levi brand image. The core brand accounted for about 76% of sales in 2008 which translates to approximately $3.27 billion. This represents an increase of about 3% of sales over 2007 and 6% over 2006. The total Levi’s advertising expenditure was $297.9 million worldwide. The message that Anderson took from these stats was that a single global message could drive results and elevate the awareness of the iconic brand.

Even with the global economy on the decline, Anderson chose to take advantage of the company’s size and resources to boost brand image while competitors were doing less advertising. Jaime Cohen Szulic Chief Marketing Officer of Levi’s is embracing mobile media and moving the marketing strategy forward very quickly. The website in Singapore is a good example. He feels that courting the potential for consumers to be advocates and not just loyal is where the future will be made. “If you enact changes for the people, they will carry your brand,” he said. “It’s about moving from loyalty to advocacy. “Brand loyalty is very passive, but brand advocacy is about being active, not passive. .He believes that online advertising should be fun. Levi Strauss & Co. plans to build on traditional advertising campaigns by adding digital channels such as social media and mobile to the mix. At a conference in April of 2010, Szulc, who is also VP of Levi Strauss & Co. in San Francisco stated that the “important trends that are driving change include faster product lifecycles and challenging macro-economics, as well as the increasingly complex marketing mix. The reason why the Internet and digital channels [such as mobile] are so important, they touch the core of human values—the need to connect, the need to feel loved and the need to feel productive, which can be really difficult to do in real life.”