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Timex
As brand recognition goes, Timex are up there with the 'superbrands'; everyone knows what they do, everyone knows the name, from the average consumer right through to triathletes and runners, and outdoors enthusiasts. So where does a brand go when it has such a well-known name? Herbie Calves explains, with a little help from UK Marketing Manager Claire Cosgrove.
SGB: Timex is obviously a well-known brand but in the short- to medium-term, what are the plans for Timex?
HC: Short to medium term, one of the biggest objectives for the brand is to reinforce the authenticity of the brand, both on the IronMan side, performance sports, and on the Expedition brand side for outdoor sports. One of the ways to achieve that is through not only offering the products that we offer in timing, but also offering some technical products as well. The technical products that we're really focusing on are fitness measurement products for IronMan; heart rate monitors, some functionalities, some of it is already offered by some of our competition but it's not done in our way, which uses better quality standards and accuracy, and improved design.
On the expedition side we're also introducing some more technical products with improved sensors for both altitude, barometer, temperature, compass, and GPS, speed and distance for navigation.
SGB: In terms of performance wrist wear, there are some really good standards out there, the competition is fierce with Polar, Suunto...
HC: When you step back outside of performance and outdoor sports and look at the Timex brand and its strength, and you compare that to the competition, you realise how Timex is differentiated from those brands. First of all brand awareness is around 80 per cent in the UK on all levels both with leading athletes and amateur athletes.
In addition to that, what Timex stands for as far as quality, the price value relationship as well, it's a brand that brings product within reach of the mass consumer. Timex was the first brand to really offer like the Model T was for cars, but for watches. It's continued that way, it brings style and technology within reach. When you look at these areas and you take that Timex equity that applies to all Timex businesses and apply that into the sports segments, we were the first ones to offer the true performance watches with the IronMan watch, and sponsoring events going back to 1983, the first IronMan event.
We're trying to improve our performance with heart rate monitoring and fitness measurement, but if we can do that successfully we also then bring an opportunity for many retailers and many consumers to bring a well-known and trusted brand to the masses. At point of sale, somebody who's heard about interval training, heard about heart rate-based training, they're more of a 'wellness' consumer, and they really don't want a 5K once a year, they're not intimidated by the Timex brand. It's a big opportunity for us, and it's a big opportunity for the market as events and sports participation continues to grow, and on the outdoor side as environmental awareness and outdoor activities continue to grow.
SGB: One of Timex's strengths is undoubtedly brand recognition; could that be any kind of an impediment, as we're talking about an entirely different consumer for a top-end sports watch, or Expedition watch.
HC: With that consumer awareness comes positives and negatives. Sometimes it can bring with it some luggage but there's the opportunity to become more approachable as a brand.
The biggest investment you can make on a brand is trying to increase your consumer awareness, that's the most costly thing to do, with millions of dollars in advertising, so we have to take that awareness and make sure we are providing authenticity. In many countries where we are doing that already, like sponsoring the London Marathon, we are tying it back to events and having athletes wear our products.
It's a constant challenge; you sell watches in Argos and at Wal-Mart in the US, but you don't want to just become an Argos/ Wal-Mart brand, so you have to offset that by making sure you're also selling in sports specialty shops and sports chains. As long as you do that and you make sure you're differentiating the product enough in those channels, you should be OK.
SGB: With endorsements, with athlete sponsorship et cetera, do you think consumers are so brand aware now that they're cynical about athlete endorsements? Contracts are well publicised when they're signed these days.
HC: Whether they get paid or not they're still wearing it, still performing in it.
The good thing about endurance sports for the most part and even outdoor sports, they're not the ball and stick sports. It's very difficult to get them to even agree on certain products, for example footwear is something that for our Timex team, we have a lot of sponsors like Trek Bikes, Powerbar and Gatorade, but we don't mandate any particular footwear, because they're very particular about which shoe they should use. So there's an example of that adds credibility to the team as well, but also the athletes that are in our sports are not superstar athletes and the amount of money that they actually get for being part of our team, sometimes it's minimal like a couple of thousand dollars, it's not like they can make a living out of it, they have day jobs.
The second part of it is that sometimes, to be able to use the products is why they want to be part of the team; that shows the value of those products to them as far as what it can do for their training, and they're good brand ambassadors as far as spokespeople within the community.
Claire Cosgrove: One of the ways that we also try to really venture into the UK is to focus on the event sponsorship and going in with credibility with the events because the UK consumer can sometimes get very cynical with regards to personality sponsorship and the whole issue of "celebrity".
SGB: With the Timex name and brand recognition... Do you not think you're successful enough?
HC: No, because the reality is that a lot of the money is on the fitness measurement side of the business, so that's where we have to improve our authenticity and credibility. Polar started there years before we did, we really started getting into the heart rate business seven, eight years ago so that's where we have a lot of room to grow, and as interval training and the heart rate industry starts to grow, that's where we have the most upside.
When a company has a large market share it's always an opportunity, consumers are probably hungry for an option and if the retailer wants to grow the category they have to give them options. We did some tests with different sporting goods in the US where we had Polar alone, and then you had Polar and Timex, and then you had Polar, Timex, Sportline, Nike, the more options we gave the heart rate category, the better the category did. When we had Polar and Timex alone, we basically doubled the size of the category.
SGB: How do you support retailers, how do you work with them?
Claire Cosgrove: In the UK specifically, we split our distribution between sports and outdoors, so we work with two very specialist distributors who have people out in the field who work with the sports stores, work with the outdoor stores. They can offer product knowledge about the service on a one-to-one basis with the retailer as well as often with the consumer, especially at events like the London Marathon Expo, and provide them with sales and product training and in-store merchandise materials so when the product hits the shop floor it sells through better.
HC: That's also a challenge for Timex as a company: you have two halves of the business, you have the style half and you have the outdoor and performance sports business. The business structure you need to support each business is different, based on the technical products, versus on the non-technical products. When we say we want to prove our authenticity growing in those sports specialty channels, providing customer service is all part of that.
