Joanna Robinson.
The Iconic is re-iterating its Got You Looking platform, driving growth by getting customers to re-look at the brand.
The company sees hiring independent creative agency Emotive as re-establishing connection to customers and understanding what drives them to stay with a brand.
The Iconic appointed Emotive last month, following a competitive pitch. Dentsu did not re-pitch after holding the account for four years.
The Iconic chief marketing officer Joanna Robinson told AdNews the company wanted to become a system for commercial growth.
“The last three and a half years was about getting Australia to re-look, because it had been a while since we'd done emotion inducing advertising, so dentsu helped us on that first phase of re-announcing our brand back in the market,” Robinson said.
“What we've realised is we need to keep evolving, and our master brand needed to evolve.
“We wanted it to become a system for commercial growth, so it's done the job of getting people to look, but how do we now really embed that within how it drives some of the commercial metrics. How does it change customer behaviour?
“And we were looking for a partner that could help us build a growth engine.”
Robinson said Emotive understood the end-to-end customer journey in a way that articulates how that relates to the commercial metrics.
“Emotive gets culture and how to drive relevance through culture, and there is chemistry,” she said.
“We really like (Emotive CEO & Founder) Simon (Joyce) and the team. They're really good humans and they do great work.
“Our CEO and CFO were part of the RFP process from end to end. It was good for them to understand how embedded the commercials it is and should be.”
Robinson’s team works on a "what got us here won’t get us there" mindset, aiming to adapt to constant changing technologies and customer habits.
“The Iconic is a tech and lifestyle fashion company, so tech is important to us,” she said.
“It’s an exciting time to be in marketing. Things are changing, everybody's finding AI.
“It’s not about replacing jobs using AI, it’s how we automate the more menial tasks and free up our people to be more creative and strategic.
"It's a very complex operating environment. Retail is tough.
“We've had interest rate rises and we're in a high discretionary category.
“And it’s making customers more discerning; they are still spending, but they're being very discerning about how they're spending.”
Robinson believes this is making the market work harder to be even more customer focused than we've ever been before.
“As a CMO, there's a lot of pressure on how we're spending the marketing investment.
"We're trying to be as lean as possible, but as strategic as possible.
“We're trying to drive not just a return on investment, but incrementality for every dollar of the marketing budget.
“We have an in-house attribution model, but we recently onboarded Mutinex and their MMM tool, enabling us to look at how we're optimising every dollar that we put into our marketing investment into driving customer behavior change.”
CMOs in the current media climate are expected to be enterprise operators, not just marketers.
“Not only do you need to emotionally resonate with customers, but you've got to structure your brand in a way that the LLMs can find it, and that means that PR, comms, media and brand are having the biggest moment it's ever had.
“I love the psychology of getting people to fall in love with your brand, but you need to demonstrate how that then influences and demands creation, revenue, profitability, retention, customer lifetime value and enterprise strategy.”
The Iconic has been working alongside the Dylan Alcott Foundation for the last three and a half years.
The Shift 20 Initiative was part of the hiring process for the first ‘Got You Looking’ phases.
Robinson said that diversity and inclusion is integrated into the way customers shop, looking to brands that are authentically pushing causes that they care about.
"That's the connection in terms of making people feel emotionally connected to brands," Robinson said.
“Inclusivity and diversity have always been part of our brand and company, so we really lent into the partnership with Shift 20,” she said.
“Sustainability has always been important in the industry, but for a while it became a bit about greenwashing.
“Authenticity is always going to be key. How do you embed diversity, belonging and inclusion as an integral part of what you stand for as a brand, because it's also about our employee base, and creating psychological safety for everyone.”
The next Got You Looking iteration is du to launch in 2027, with Emotive already on some early market campaigns for the remainder of the year.
“As part of their pitch, they came to us with a couple of ideas for the go to market campaigns,” Robinson said.
You will see their work being brought to life in some of the key campaigns that we have in the next six months.
“We want to take Got You Looking from a high impact brand platform to a connected growth platform, so you're going to see it reflected across all of our touch points, rather than just an off-platform campaign.”
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.