Is brand building the secret to solidifying the growth of private label?
Private label products have been eating into the market share of branded labels for years now. It can be argued, though, retailers are not doing enough to solidify this trend by engaging with what will make them stick around long-term: brand building.
When she created the Boots No7 brand in 1935, the Jersey-born businesswoman Florence Boot was defining a marketing strategy that is now being identified in current retail data as a path to future growth.
Using the 1930s fashion influencer Mrs W.G. Dalrymple as its “face”, No7 launched with an audacious advertising campaign that underlined Boots’s belief in its new brand. Mrs Dalrymple was shown wearing trousers as a signal of women’s demands for new social freedoms. “It showed women in film star poses. It had attitude,” says Richard Bowden, marketing director, Walgreens Boots Alliance. “It talked about the product but showed how women wanted to be seen in a bold way.”
