Webwatch Article
November 1, 2004
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_webwatch.asp?ww_id=200

A&F — second skin

Most appealing to students able to live full time in jeans and trendy accessories, Abercrombie & Fitch became best known for what the models weren’t wearing in its A&F Quarterly catalogue.

Putting the risk in risqué, Abercrombie’s images of scantily clad, jailbait sexuality were so blatantly provocative, they pushed boundaries and sparked a controversy the industry hasn’t seen since a barely pubescent Brooke Shields expressed an intimate connection with her Calvins. At least she was fully clothed.

Of course with tactics like this, a brand has to expect a little opposition. Entangled in litigation, Abercrombie & Fitch was under fire for issues ranging from decency to racism. The National Coalition for the Protection of Children & Families led a boycott of the A&F Quarterly and eventually, the company caved and recalled its racy catalog.

Visit a retail location of Abercrombie & Fitch and you’ll encounter an entirely different brand experience. With an atmosphere that is more dorm than sex palace, racks of clothing are the focus and blown-up images of gorgeous models engaged in a carefree collegiate lifestyle are relegated to a backdrop.

The new A&F Magazine displays clothed pinups of what it calls “Hollywood royalty” (for instance actor Robert Redford’s daughter Amy) and regular folks (a mechanic), providing solid evidence that the brand has cleaned up its act. However, it might be a case of too little, too late. According to a recent issue of Business Week, shares of A&F dropped 12.4 percent on 11 August, following reports that third-quarter earnings will likely plunge below analyst estimates.

We visited A&F.com to see how far the brand is willing to go online.

A shirtless (but harmless) black and white image of an “A&F Rising Star,” (soap actor Justin Bruening), splashes prominently across the home page. His name is featured along with a following “…for Ezra Fitch,” leaving viewers to figure out why the actor is representing just one of the names on the brand.

Each gender-specific product home page introduces a fresh image of a beautiful Abercrombie & Fitch model with links to the clothing on the bottom. All this focus on beautiful people may get visitors off to a fluffy start but after a few clicks, it becomes apparent that the site does have substance. With superior e-tailing functionality and an eye on the target (tweens and teens), the folks at A&F have built a strong framework to shill clothing and increase brand awareness.

Product is divided by consumer group. An online clothing brand’s bread and butter lies in the effectiveness of its product pages, and these are exemplary in their approach. When users finally get the opportunity to click on a product, it produces a clear depiction and detailed description along with clickable swatches that instantly display the desired article in each particular fabric or color. This is good use of the functionality of the web. Additional information (such as size charts) is displayed in pop-up windows, preserving the sanctity of the user’s browsing experience. One standout feature in particular is the virtual Changing Room—a separate window listing each item the user has looked at, made readily available without so much as a click on the back button.

A great example of awareness building can be found in the Abercrombie Kids section, which is treated as its own online entity (once in it, you can’t get back to “home”), but has a congruous look and feel with the rest of the brand messaging. The content is designed to include the user, giving her the feeling that she too can become a star of the site. Here are profiles of “normal” A&F loving consumer, depicting a brand lifestyle experience. One smart value-added feature is a music section designed to introduce site visitors to a new record release. Users can download a player and listen, making the audio experience voluntary.

Some online efforts could be construed as brand propaganda instead of effective, brand building exercises. A&FTV is a brand identity/partnership area with downloadable music and streamed videos. The music part adds value and might appeal to most users, but the current content on the TV side doesn’t add much. In light of current lawsuits against the brand, cynics might even get the impression that the current “Team Abercrombie” video smacks of opportunist propaganda created to dissolve the impression that the brand engages in racist practices.

Once you get past the razzle-dazzle of young, hot and gorgeous, Abercrombie & Fitch.com is all in all a decent clothing site. It is chock full of strong, yet traditional, brand awareness tools and congruous, new-and-improved imagery and messaging. Instead of creating controversy (which diminishes the product relevance), it uses these model images to lure consumers toward the clothes and give great e-tail when they get there. Careful not to connote anything racy or racist it covers all bases, catering content to each age group and reinforcing the (revamped) message that Abercrombie & Fitch are no longer dirty words.

Vivian Manning-Schaffel is a freelance writer who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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