Fur Industry Goes on the Offensive in Bid to Brighten Tarnished Image : MARKETING / BRUCE HOROVITZ
When Wanda Presburger set a sales trap outside her Beverly Hills fur salon, she never expected such a quick catch.
The owner of Somper Furs recently adorned her store window with the identical beaver coat that she knew would be featured in the fur industry’s first image campaign, which started last month.
Only days after placing the fur in her store window, a customer with the ad in hand walked into the store and snapped up the $8,000 coat. “The power of this type of advertising is incredible,” Presburger said. “We’ve received more calls on that coat than anything.”
After years of watching sales decline, the fur industry is fighting back in an aggressive effort to revamp an image that has been soundly trashed by animal activists. The $1-million campaign features print ads woven together with the slogan “Fur--More Than Any Other Fabric” and shows furs draped across barefoot models in beach settings. The campaign also includes the Fur Information Council of America’s first TV spot. The council also plans to print a booklet aimed at convincing skeptical teen-age girls that it’s ethically OK to wear furs.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the industry will post more than 60% of its 1993 business. With sales up 10% last year--after a five-year downward spiral--the industry is on the offensive.
“This is a survival issue for the fur industry,” said Eugene Secunda, marketing professor at Adelphi University in Garden City, N.Y.
It is the fur industry’s “last-ditch effort” to make a comeback, said Lisa Lange, the international campaign manager for Washington-based People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
But fur industry executives insist that the issue isn’t anything as serious as survival, just a case of encouraging consumers to buy furs by reinventing their image.
“It shows that fur is not just for dressed-up, uptight situations,” said Steve Gold, president of Steve Gold Inc., the New York agency that created the campaign. The fur-wrapped model in the ad wears no jewelry--and no shoes, for that matter. “Fur is a warm and fuzzy thing,” he said.
The fur rebound is more than hype, industry executives say. They note that fashion designer Donna Karan is again using fur in her fall collection. And several major retail stores are responding. Nordstrom recently opened fur salons in its Oak Brook, Ill., stores. And Bloomingdales plans to double the size of its New York salon.
“We want people to recognize fur for its beauty,” said Carol Wynne, executive director of the Washington-based Fur Information Council of America. “Fur is something that makes you feel good.” In fact, the new print ad campaign goes a step further, promoting fur for “the way it empowers.”
Such Madison Avenue imagery draws angry responses from animal rights activists.
“Fur doesn’t empower--it symbolizes cruelty,” Lange said. Shortly after the print ad appeared in Vogue magazine last month, activists picketed outside Vogue’s New York offices.
Some marketing experts credit the fur industry for finally fighting back.
“It’s a very sound strategy to come out with a positive message about fur,” said Al Ries, chairman of the Greenwich, Conn., corporate identity firm Trout & Ries. “Most consumers have only seen the negative.”
Clearly, the fur business is a shadow of its former self. In recent years, the economic downturn combined with unusually warm winters and widely publicized social activism have badly hurt industry sales. After peaking at $1.8 billion in 1987, annual sales tumbled to less than $1 billion in 1991--although the industry reports 1992 sales at $1.1 billion. As the price of fur nose-dived in recent years, a number of retailers and manufacturers closed their doors.
The nation’s largest furrier, Evans Inc., closed 11 of its company stores and more than 50 leased operations in recent years, said Robert Meltzer, executive vice president of the Chicago-based firm. His company’s annual sales of $100 million are down more than one-third from 1987, he said.
But things have begun to turn around in recent months, Meltzer said. After several years of closing stores, the company is opening two new stores this year. “I’m seeing us sell in quantities that we never would have sold a few years ago,” he said.
Meanwhile, the new fur image campaign will certainly help the entire industry, said image specialist Ries. “It allows people to come out of their closets wearing their fur coats,” he said.
But not everyone is impressed with the marketing assault. Ads that refer to fur as a “fabric” insult their target audience, said Adelphi University’s Secunda. “Fur is fur, and fabric is fabric. Only an idiot would confuse the two,” he said.
What’s more, the notion of wearing a full-length fur coat on the beach is “laughable,” said Joel Portugal, partner at the New York corporate identify firm Anspach Grossman Portugal. “Is that where their customers will be wearing these things?”
Activists, meanwhile, are outraged at the comeback attempt.
On Nov. 26, animal rights groups plan to hold anti-fur demonstrations in major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and New York. They also plan to make their presence felt in Los Angeles at the Academy Awards show next spring. As celebrities arrive at the event, activists armed with loud bullhorns plan to badger anyone who is seen wearing fur.
“Fur won’t come back today or tomorrow,” said Lange. “For fur, there is no tomorrow.”
Briefly . . .
The Los Angeles agency Poppe Tyson has won the estimated $500,000 ad business for Pacific Crest Technologies, a designer of personal computer scanners. . . . Los Angeles-based Sherman & Brittenham Advertising, which already handles the estimated $1-million ad business for Chatsworth-based stereo speaker maker Infinity Systems, has picked up an additional $1-million car sweepstakes account from the firm. . . . Venice-based Chiat/Day has realigned its New York and Toronto offices into Chiat/Day East, to be overseen by nine-year Chiat/Day veteran Ira Matathia as president. . . . Katherine Graham, recently retired chair of Washington Post Co., will speak at today’s noon meeting of the Advertising Club of Los Angeles at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Fur Sales
After a five-year down ward spiral, fur sales picked up slightly last year, and industry executive hope to keep sales climbing this year with a new-imge campaign.
1992: $1.1 billion
Source: Fur information Council of America
