Karen Rubin's Ramblings

The target market Polo Ralph Lauren is targeting is not those folks who want to live the lifestyle, they are targeting those folks who are living that lifestyle NOW. It has always been a premium brand.

Would have to agree with the last comment. Ralph knows exactly who he's talking to. Even in really bad times there will always be some people who's lifestyle go unaffected...that's just how good they got it, and Ralph knows that. Oh he definitely gets it. Too bad you didn't like the ads because that Argentine Polo player is so easy on the eyes ;)

Interesting point, if Ralph is aiming towards only the luxury market I would guess he is wasting lots of money showing his ads during the Red Sox games. TV ads are a traditional outbound technique, I am sure he could use some more targeted methods to appeal to those he is marketing to.  
 
Lissette - the ad was odd to me, but I absolutely agree that they picked a good spokesman and I didn't mind watching! :-)

You are making the assumption that no one watching the Red Sox games is in the market that Ralph is targeting - this cannot be true. 
 
TV ads for items such as a new fragrance line are aimed at creating awareness of new products (not their brand since it is so well known) within a large consumer market. Yes, other than getting the number of people who watched, it is not possible to get an ROI on how many who watched the commercial also bought the fragrance. But, it sure is a channel that allows Ralph to quickly create awareness that they have launched a new fragrance line. In the ultra competitive fragrance market they are in (both for online searches and offline), their promotion via TV ads could very well be justified.  
 
As a supporting stat, only ~12,000 people searched for "ralph lauren fragrance" on google in May. 2M people searched for fragrances in May, but it is such a competitive keyword. So I am not sure if they could have done an effective promotion via inbound marketing methods. 
 
I am not sure what other ways they could have done it to be more effective than TV ads or other traditional methods of advertising. Ideas?

Karen, 
I have second thoughts on my comment above. There are innumerable cases of viral videos that have been done very effectively that could have helped Ralph promote his fragrance line with very minimal cost (dah, what made me forget that earlier today is beyond me). 
 
Good blog though. I will be reading it going forward.

That is an fj40 landcruiser, not a jeep :)