Hunkemöller’s new brand strategy is all about sheroism, empowerment and inclusivity. “As a brand, you can say you want to inspire women,” says Alexandra Legro, Global Marketing & Communications Director at Hunkemöller, “but you can actually do it. We’re starting a movement where women support each other to become the best versions of themselves. Sheroism is our invitation to all women to embrace their own beauty and the beauty of other women.”
“We inspire and empower women to be their most beautiful and authentic selves. Together we lift each other up.” This is Hunkemöller’s new goal. It is a sentence that, if Alexandra has her way, will have a positive impact on the lives of many women. But first she explains how the new brand strategy came about. “Our ‘old’ branding was formulated 15 years ago. During that time we have grown from three hundred stores to an international lingerie company with nine hundred stores in nineteen countries.”
diversity
Hunkemöller does not change course completely. Mission, vision, core values, unique selling points and purpose were already about empowerment, sheroism, inclusivity and sustainability. Alexandra: “We want to offer women a platform, that’s the biggest change. We are moving from a product-focused strategy to a more purpose- and brand-focused strategy. As part of this process, we invited various customers to one of the management meetings. It was great to work as a leadership team with the women we do this for. A memorable moment was when one of the women said she never wears sexy underwear because she feels like she doesn’t have the body for it. Another woman said, ‘But you’re beautiful! Of course you can wear nice underwear.’ Goose flesh! We literally saw our destiny happening under our noses.”
Really make a difference
Purpose means something like the reason for your existence. When it comes to fulfilling purpose, many companies get stuck on the question: make more sales. But Hunkemöller is about much more. Alexandra: “Value creation can occur in many more ways. It’s about culture, internally and externally. It’s about being a company where customers enjoy shopping and where people enjoy working. For example, it’s also about how you can stand out from other brands and what you want to achieve as a brand. We want women – all women – to feel comfortable. We want to help them with this. We can achieve this with comfortable and beautiful underwear, but so do our competitors. We really want to make a difference. But we can’t do this alone, we have to do this together. That’s why we want to be the platform for and by women. We will create content that inspires and challenges women to talk about their insecurities. What we encourage women to do: love yourself, love your body and encourage other women to do the same. We want to stimulate this type of social discussion. Of course, we also communicate that we sell beautiful products, but always with the aim of encouraging women. This is sheroism for us.”
Sheroism
Sheroism itself is nothing new for Hunkemöller. “We have been calling our target group Shero for years. All the women who work for us are also Sheros. Sheroism is our philosophy and anchored in our DNA. We recently launched our new campaign and even after that, Sheroism will appear in every statement. What will this look like in practice? Through our media channels, we will inspire women to help and encourage each other. We will work with influencers who can in turn help their supporters. We’ll be organizing table conversations with famous women where they’ll talk about their insecurities and what beautiful lingerie means to them. We have a loyalty program with 5.3 million members worldwide that we will also use. And there will be a big brand event.”
Positive environment
We all sometimes experience how women can behave towards each other. This should just stop, they think at Hunkemöller. “So we hired a community manager to talk to people who make negative comments. Something like this: ‘If someone shows you something that you perhaps wouldn’t do yourself, that doesn’t necessarily have to be wrong. It’s nice that it makes her feel good, isn’t it?’ Our community will be a positive and trusting environment. When women are strong together, they can achieve more than they ever imagined.”