CASE STUDY

Integrating Product and Marketing Strategies to Drive Global Sales Growth for a Leading Central and Eastern European Fashion Brand

By aligning the marketing and product departments through organisational restructuring and a unified strategy, the brand not only resolved internal challenges but also achieved substantial growth and increased market presence.

The Situation

The brand faced internal communication challenges, with divided marketing teams and misaligned efforts, leading to a fragmented customer experience.

A market leading Central and Eastern European fashion brand, after making significant improvements in its product and collection strategies, uncovered a critical internal challenge: a lack of communication and cooperation between the sales, marketing, and product departments. This disconnect became particularly evident when new trends and product innovations, developed by the product team, were not effectively communicated to customers by the sales and marketing teams.

The brand's marketing efforts were split between two polarised groups: the e-commerce marketing team, focused on commercial objectives, and the legacy marketing team, driven by creative initiatives. This division led to disjointed brand activities, such as the launch of two separate Valentine's Day campaigns by these teams, resulting in a fragmented customer experience. We recognized the need for a unified marketing strategy that balanced both commercial and creative needs, ensuring that all departments were aligned and working towards common goals.

The Challenge

How can the brand's marketing teams align with the product department to create a cohesive and effective brand communication strategy?

Approach

To address the communication gaps and operational inefficiencies, we recommended a comprehensive organisational transformation:

Creation of a Unified Visual Communication Department: We merged the e-commerce and legacy marketing teams to form a new 'Visual Communication' department. This team was given the responsibility for all visual content across the brand, ensuring a consistent and cohesive message that bridged the gap between commercial and creative objectives.
Product-Led Marketing Strategy: We introduced a 'product-led' marketing strategy, where all brand activities and communications were grounded in the trends, themes, and innovations developed by the product department. This alignment ensured that marketing efforts were directly tied to the brand’s core offerings, enhancing relevance and appeal.
Strategic Division of Brand Activities:

Grow Customer: We optimised activities focused on commercial products, such as promotions and discounts, to effectively grow the customer base by leveraging existing product lines.
Get Customers: We expanded activities aimed at attracting new customers through product innovations, emerging trends, and targeted marketing campaigns that resonated with new demographics.

"... played a crucial role in aligning different parts of our business and building cross-functional cooperation systems and tools."

Brand Experience Coordinator

Results

The brand achieved global sales growth, improved marketing efficiency, and boosted e-commerce success, resulting in higher average order values.

The implementation of these strategies led to a significant improvement in the brand’s overall performance:

Global Sales Growth: Sales increased in markets outside the brand's home country of Poland, demonstrating the success of the unified marketing approach in resonating with a global audience.
Enhanced Marketing Efficiency: The consolidation of marketing teams and the introduction of a product-led strategy streamlined operations, reducing redundancies and increasing the impact of marketing efforts.
E-commerce Success: There was a notable growth in the sales of e-commerce products, driven by more focused and cohesive online brand experience.
Higher Average Order Values: The new marketing strategies contributed to an increase in average order values, as customers were more engaged with the brand’s curated, trend-driven collections.