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Brand differentiation through a strong and relevant positioning is commonplace. The leading brands are built-in with clear added value and customer promise, meaning that the best-in-class are often pre-empting a whole category in the minds of customers. For example, Louis Vuitton is linked to “the art of travel” (a phrase which encapsulates its origins as a trunk manufacturer, its positioning as a luxury brand, and connotes an idea of freedom of movement), Nike relates to sports and performance, and Emirates Airline with the notion of travelling in style. This is true as well for branded retailers: Apple’s appeal is all about uncompromising quality high-tech lifestyle, Zara about high fashion at affordable prices, and The Gap about quality apparel at the right price.

For brands and branded retailers, such differentiation in the minds of customers is achieved through heavy marketing investments, allowing them to establish a clear positioning which is at the core of their business.

Third-party retailers, such as department stores, are in a different position, especially for the larger ones. For a long time, they were seen by both businesses and customers as “houses of brands” and, as such, able to talk to anyone, proposing “everything under the same roof” (JCPenney was promising in 2006 “It’s all inside. For all the sides of you”, and well before that, Harrods’ motto was “all things for all people, everywhere” in Latin). For that reason, they were positioning themselves as being a crossroads (in Paris, well-known slogans like “everything can be found at La Samaritaine” and “there is always something going on at Le Bon Marché”), places of constant discovery (Manor’s slogan is “Special Everyday”, Isetan Shinjuku’s promise in the 1960s was “everyday is new. Isetan is for fashion”), or pre-empted the authoritative position of being the leading fashion destination (Harvey Nichols slogan in the 1950s was “London’s leading fashion house”, Peek & Cloppenburg was “House of Fashion” in 2000, and Dillard’s “the style of your life” in 2009). The notion of price was also important: in 2001 Arnotts was promising to be “the heart of style and value” while John Lewis has long committed to “never knowingly undersell”.

However, a brand promise based on being the place to be, at the edge of fashion, or at the best price, is quite difficult to sustain in the digital age when the Internet precisely allows the creation of massive digital marketplaces, giving access to the most obscure fashion in a millisecond, and always with the possibility to compare prices with retailers across the planet.

Some department stores have resisted thanks to their historical advantage: Harrods or KaDeWe’s reputation about luxury is universal (KaDeWe’s slogan in 2004 was “the fine art of first-class shopping”) while Galeries Lafayette is recognized as a place where fashion is much more than a mere promise, by giving access to every trend from across the planet.

But what happens when the goal is to pre-empt a new market, far from the historical moneymakers that luxury, fashion, cosmetics, or home categories have represented for department stores?

Last September, for the first time, IADS member Boyner, in Turkey, hostedtheir “Boyner Dynamic” event: 3 days of outdoor activities and gatherings to establish Boyner as the leading lifestyle destination in the country. The catch? Nothing was to be sold. It was all about gathering people together and animating a community. Let’s review it.

Boyner’s strategic goals are to capitalize on a perfect trifecta of changes, with the country, customers and market changing

We reviewed Boyner’s history in an IADS Exclusive earlier in 2022. What came up clearly about the situation the company found itself in was that a change was needed due to macroeconomic shifts in the country:

• The country’s population is younger than in Europe, but ageing: the median age is 33.5 years old (to be compared with 28.3 years old in 2007), with half of the population aged less than 30 years old.
• This population is urban (77% live in cities), connected to the Internet (95.5% of the 15-24 years old and 80.8% of the 25-74 years old) and healthy: life expectancy in Turkey is 77.31 years (the same as in Europe), 9 years more than in 2000, and a whopping 20 years more than in 1980 (while, in Europe, life expectancy was above 70 years in 1980).

As such, the average Turkish customers know trends and are well informed about brands. In parallel, the notions of nature, environment and health have become much more important than in the past.

In parallel, Boyner underwent some significant changes, as we reported in our previous paper: it transformed from being a manufacturer-turned-retailer in the 1950s to a branded distribution group, active in many verticals, and heavily relying on its private labels, appealing to the middle class.

This strategy worked until a few years ago, and 2020 represented an inflexion in the strategy with the release of a new store concept acting as the visible part of a new company approach to the market. Sensing that customers were evolving and starting to ask for something else, especially the younger ones, Boyner decided to pivot in the following areas:

• They decided to become a “lifestyle multi-brand destination”, combining private labels and international brands, selected, curated and presented in a way which appealed to and made sense for the new generation of customers,
• Anchoring the stores in their neighbouring communities was also key, as price was not seen as a sufficient differentiation point anymore. Sustainability and wellness were identified as key differentiation points, in tune with customers’ new preoccupations.
• Proposing a set of new innovative digital services, including state-of-the-art apps and a 90-minutes delivery service, Boyner Now, to easily blend into customers’ lives while at the same time facilitating the data harvest.

As a consequence, new stores were opened which reflected exactly this: vibrant locations with a different approach according to the neighbourhood (the first iteration, Cadde, located in the Asian part of Istanbul, has a different look & feel from the latest unit to have opened, in the posh Istinye Park location), but all promoting the notion of a sustainable lifestyle, good for the planet and oneself (this was also a very astute way to differentiate from the other large retail company in the country, Beymen, a former entity of Boyner, which is fully focused on trendy fashion and luxury).

However, Boyner’s top management also realized that new stores, and money invested in marketing campaigns, were a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for success: they had to find ways to change the Turkish customers’ perception of them (especially the younger ones), not an easy feat knowing that the company, and the brand name, have been around for 70 years. This is how they came up with the idea of the Boyner Dynamic Fest.

What was the Boyner Dynamic Fest?

Last September, Boyner organized a festival over a sunny weekend, in Istanbul’s largest open-air park, to “celebrate its passion for active life”. More specifically, this meant that Boyner organized a multi-faceted event designed to entertain its customers and celebrate a sporty lifestyle:

• The first day opened with a morning run, and participants were then invited to take part in dance workshops, workout routines, yoga sessions and other communal activities over the weekend which were striking in terms of the level of participation from many different generations of people,
• It was also possible to practice sports, thanks to a basketball court, a soccer field, gym machines and bikes in the open air,
• Nutritionists and life coaches were also animating workshops to explain more about the work-life balance, and Boyner completed this approach by inviting Turkish Olympic athletes on stage to share their experience with the crowd,
• A kid’s zone was organized where children could play, spend energy, practice face painting, or design wooden shoes.
• The 2 days were also peppered with concerts and public performances from Turkish singers and celebrities.

The event also aimed at communicating on the topics of sustainability. For this reason, participants were invited to step for charities: 1.3m steps were given to 11 non-governmental organizations in the domains of health, sport, and education. Also, the whole event was designed to be waste-free: rubbish was collected and recycled (7,000 plastic bottles and 4.5 tons of garbage were recycled), including the decor (500m2 of vinyl was upcycled) and raw material (6 tons of water used during the event were used in agricultural irrigation after the event, and 3,600 nails used in the festival were removed and reused).

All in all, the event looked like a very pleasant festival, which ticked all the boxes in terms of encouraging a healthy, green, and responsible lifestyle, but mixing it with enjoyable experiences and learning. As the Boyner CEO put it after the event, “We feel responsible for social goods on issues that affect everyone, such as the good life, and we always take steps that we combine with experience”.

What was so special about the Boyner Dynamic Fest?

From a participant’s point of view, this event looked like a very cool and enjoyable weekend full of activities that could be practiced in open-air, with family and friends. The fact that entrance was free of charge probably also helped.

However, a closer look at how the event was built showed some interesting features.

First, while the event entrance was free, participants had to register through a dedicated platform, independent from the existing Boyner ecosystem (the Boyner Dynamic Fest was advertised on a regional basis independently from the retail platforms). All in all, the event attracted a crowd of 6,000 people, which means that this event was a good deal in terms of customer data acquisition and the ability to contact them, even if they are not customers yet, in the future.

Also, another interesting point is that many brands took part in the event. In a dedicated area, a village of brands was built, with names such as Adidas, ASICS, DC, Jack&Jones, Levi’s, MACFit, Merrell, Puma, Skechers and Under Armour. Boyner astutely convinced this specific set of brands, which is perfectly aligned with the healthy and sporty purpose of this event, to take part in the festival. It should be noted that not only were brands not paid nor given perks to take part in this event, but they also had to pay for the set-up of their tents and product displays. The fact that this festival was a completely unprecedented initiative probably helped convince them, but Boyner’s argument was more striking: it was, for those brands, a great way to be associated with a retailer striving hard to be recognized as the champion of lifestyle, sport, and health in Turkey.

And this went through one of the most striking aspects of this whole festival: nothing was for sale.

It was all about customer education and experience and giving them the possibility to discover brands and products in a relaxed, no-strings-attached environment. The fact that no transaction was involved probably helped people ask questions about products and services without the fear of being lured into purchasing something at the end.

Boyner also made a good deal in terms of content, since all brands were more than happy to bring with them their own stories and customer-oriented content, adding to the richness of the event.

The fact that the whole event was free, without even making a product out of participants, made it quite interesting in terms of approach. Boyner dedicated a significant amount of time, energy, people and money to organizing an event that was not designed to directly contribute to its P&L. It was instead seen as a marketing investment, but designed in such a way that its free and generous aspect would encourage the crowd to participate even more and, ultimately, associate Boyner with the values that were championed during this event.

Some consumer brands already have such an approach of making marketing investments without any hope of ROI, just to pre-empt a specific positioning or customer perception. This is exactly what the President of Coca-Cola explained during the IADS CEO call in January: the company was directly investing in consumer marketing even though they do not have any B to C activity in Europe, as they rely only on the activity of their distributor (their bottler). They see these investments as “holistic”:

• They allow placing the brand close to the customer,
• They make their partners successful.

If, in this case, such “disinterested” investments are understandable, they are less common on retailers’ side: after all, department stores have always insisted brands should invest in trade marketing to promote their names to the final customer, even though this also contributed to the department store to being perceived as the exclusive place to find them.

Boyner’s initiative of financing their brand equity without any ROI expectation is uncommon at this stage but is also part of a larger trend where department stores have to invest in their brand perception to make sure they stay relevant to their audience or attract a new one. For instance, when Magasin du Nord invested to open a popup in Malmö, Sweden (where they do not have any activities), the purpose was not so much to generate sales but to create brand equity. Brand equity’s efficiency was proven when Breuninger renamed the recently acquired Konen store in Munich with its name, sales soared even though the upgrade works had not started yet.

Department stores cannot rely only on their featured brands’ marketing efforts to differentiate themselves through selection and curation, they need to stand for the values they aim to promote. In this perspective, the Boyner Dynamic Fest is a great example of a genuinely disinterested operation, included in a broader marketing scheme, which contributes to building brand equity, one brick at a time.

Credits: IADS (Selvane Mohandas du Ménil)