PR AND MARKETING
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ADIDAS ORIGINALS | PALACE SKATEBOARDS
Collaborations in conjunction with sports brands Adidas Originals and Reebok have increased Palace's reputation as these larger brands have a larger position in the fashion market and therefore widened Palace's consumer. Palace is looking to compete on a global level, and having now done a collaboration with many major British sporting companies, the first being Umbro in 2012 and Reebok Classics in 2013 (London, 2017). Consequently allowing Palace to have the finances to collaborate with the likes of Adidas originals.
Palace has been collaborating with Adidas Originals for 4 years now, this marketing concept can be "most effective and cost-efficient ways to grow a business" (Marketingdonut.co.uk, 2017). The lifestyle brand's collaboration with Palace revived Adidas originals popularity amongst young consumers. In return, Adidas shared their 3.3 million and 12.4 million followers on Twitter and Instagram (Mintel, 2016) with Palace. This collaboration between the two brands was successful in increasing awareness to Palace as Google trends show an increase in Palace searches after the first advertisement for the collaboration in 2013. (SEE BELOW)
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PALACE REEBOK CLASSICS
Actor, producer and "legitimate skatewear icon" (Wolf, 2017) Jonah Hill was used to endorse the brand in 2016. The advertisement consisted of Jonah walking through the Palace store in London and using skateboarding jargon. This campaign attracted a wider audience to Palace, this is because Jonah Hill is more well-known than the brand. The ad features the actor illustrating to the customer why they should buy the trainers. "They've got these dope new sneakers that they've made in collaboration with some sportswear company called Reebok,". Thus by making a comical collaborative video with the brand has increased both reputation and awareness of the brand.
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JONAH HILL | PALACE SKATEBOARDS
This increase in reputation can also be seen through the Instagram following of 796K followers as of 31/3/2017 (Johnstone, 2017). The hashtag search of Palace Skateboards shows 170,201 posts with top posts being from brand ambassadors such as @thestarrlife, @jedbrailey, and @slamcityskates who are a stockist of Palace Skateboards. The reason Instagram is so popular for the brand is due to Palace consumers being most active on Instagram as 55% of online adults ages 18 to 29 use Instagram (Duggan, 2017) and this demographic is the same as the Palace consumer who is predominately aged 18-25 (Johnstone,2017).
With regards to celebrity endorsement, Palace does not "seed" clothes to celebrities such as West, in the hope they'll post a selfie on Instagram instead they have an attitude of: "We make it and that's it. If you want it, come to the shop." (Cochrane, 2017). Doing PR with people who represent Palace is vital for a coherent brand image and an influencer establishes credibility through each social media post or advertisement. One individual who is sponsored by Palace Skateboards is @blondeymccoy who himself is a prominent skateboarder within the skateboarding community. Palace has aligned themselves with this individual due to his following of 86k, these followers are predominately males aged 14-28 who themselves also participate in skateboarding (Johnstone, 2017).
Palace Skateboards twitter account is @PALACELONDON, only posting near a retail drop date creates a hype for a retail drop with details on what, where and how new merchandise can be purchased when finally released. Palace Skateboards engage in a distinct London tone of voice which matches the brand's DNA of being a skateboarding brand. There's a natural punk spirit and anti-authoritarian ethos that comes with but this necessarily does not work with the consumer. The researcher found that 43.9% of people who follow Palace on Twitter finds that their page is not engaging at all (Johnstone, 2017).
The Facebook page has 158,613 likes and posts get around 5k interactions, 1000 shares and 30 comments at a time, thus proving that Palace Skateboards have a large online following and interaction on this platform. Observation by the researcher found that there is a community within Facebook called "Palace Talk UK/EU" of which has 71K members. This huge demand for an engaging relationship with the brand has been created by the consumers to make up for the lack of communication from the brand themselves. On this page consumers post Palace merchandise for sale, styling tips, posts wanting to buy specific Palace garments and discussing the important drop dates and what people hope to purchase. An influencer within the streetwear scene stated "I think Facebook groups are a huge benefit to the fashion game. Not only do they allow you to buy and sell the clothes you want, they also allow you to connect and make friends with people that are interested in the same things as you." (Highsnobiety, 2017).
Palace published a magazine in 2016 and would feature "hi-grade dumb captions, zero stinky deodorant adverts, no skatepark sequences of 7-year-olds doing inverts, and will be collectable." (Yeung, 2017). The magazine was sold at Palace's Soho store and retailed for £10.00, however, there were no further publications. This may be due to the consumer for Palace does not engage with print publications, only 6% of Palace consumers have seen a printed advertisement (Johnstone, 2017) which shows that this publication was not successful.
Observation from the researcher found that stickers of the Palace logo are scattered throughout Soho London this could be argued as either ambient or guerrilla marketing, Triferg stickers are given to customers inside their shopping bags when they purchase in the store. This subtle marketing creates something for people to talk about and engages the local community of Soho with the brand, thus widening the audience from more than just skaters.
