Alexandra Legro – Hunkemöller

Alexandra Legro is the Global Marketing & Communication Director and Board Member at Hunkemöller. She is responsible for a wide range of activities including all marketing communications as well as instore visual merchandising communication, CRM & Loyalty programme, creative production, marketing intelligence and corporate social responsibility. The Dutch lingerie firm currently has almost 900 stores spread across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. Alexandra: “The marketing communication team consists of approximately 45 people who carry out the marketing for all regions, apart from the international franchise markets, for which we only create the assets and campaign calendar. We work with a campaign calendar that is the same across all countries, in order to communicate one clear message. Localisation is only done, when there is a big opportunity, to keep consistency across operations.”

Main KPIs for growth

Hunkemöller has always been very data-driven as an organisation, and that is partially because they introduced their loyalty programme very early on, Alexandra: “Approximately 73% of all sales come from our members, resulting in a lot of data. We are a very KPI driven company, so we connect several channels and sources to create insights, and every team has a monthly business review focussed on their KPI’s. When it comes to marketing, we look at offline and online traffic, member base growth and retention, social media engagement, fanbase growth, PR-value, and reach. In addition, we use a window rating system, which is based on whether people have seen the window, and there after rating them. The entire customer journey is also tracked via our customer survey, our members are regularly questioned on price, product acceptance, and simply what they like or dislike. Then, based on those results, we alter our collections as required. We also measure NPS on brand, as well as at a store level. In addition, long-term brand KPIs are tracked as well, which we have been carrying out for several years, and aim to improve. Data has been a part of the company from the very start. We are truly fact-based, instead of just relying on gut feeling.”

Creative development

According to Alexandra, creative revolves around what you want to express as a company, from strategy to channels, creative assets to products. Alexandra: “Hunkemöller is a design-led business, which means that a lot of inspiration comes from the catwalk shows, which is then translated into trends and products you see in our stores. Marketing uses the design concept into a creative marketing concept, and eventually a campaign which is then distributed to all relevant channels. Each platform has different needs and challenges, around different target segments, and customer journeys – so how do we adapt our creative, and make sure it is relevant for that channel? We feel that, being creative with data behind it, can also lead to new insights and growth opportunities. And last, but not the least, our customers also provide great feedback via various channels, which we can also feed into other areas of the process.”

Role of research

Hunkemöller uses a lot of research when it comes to their creatives and products. Alexandra: “We carry out product testing but also do A/B testing with emails, social and online. In addition, new concepts and ideas are tested in our stores, which helps us gather a lot of inspiration, backed with data, which means we can conduct a lot of research internally. Being customer driven is truly important for us as a business, but what is also equally important is insights from our employees. We have 7000 employees, mostly of which are young people, who fit within our target group. By having an ambassador programme, with over 150 ambassadors, we gather feedback and inspiration from them as well, with a large fanbase and high engagement on these platforms, one can see that lingerie really gives women the feeling of female empowerment and self-confidence.”

Adapting to current times

When the corona crisis hit, Hunkemöller was planning on introducing their big annual promotion of the Bra Party. Alexandra: “Several days after lockdown was announced, we were supposed to go live with a commercial revolving around our annual Bra Party. At the time, it was decided to stop the TV campaign, as it did not feel appropriate, given the context of Covid. So, we decided to move forward with a more toned-down selection of photos which were more subtle and less festive. More people were doing their workouts at home or wearing lounge and nightwear, so we created more content around those products, such as, workout sessions and livestream sessions with DJ’s. We also turned things around in our production as we couldn’t conduct photo or video shoots in the normal way, so all the assets were Covid proofed and done in a home setting, which was a great success. Our company is very agile, so we were able to turn things around quite quickly. It was a lot of work, but we made it happen as a team.”

A different strategy

Alexandra highlights Hunkemöller’s celebrity-proposition: “Not a lot of brands do it, but using celebrity endorsements, gives a new twist to your brand. We have worked with celebrities like Doutzen Kroes and Sylvie Meis, and are now moving to a different strategy. Before, we used to have one person as the face of the brand for a longer period of time, and it worked well. However, now, we want to cater towards more diversity, and it is difficult to find a face that will make everyone happy. To be able to offer more diversity all year-round, we changed our strategy by working with different types of personalities, from internationally, well-known celebrities, to more locally known influencers who have a beautiful story to tell. This will allow us to show different styles and different messages.”

Never-ending curiosity

“I think we will be moving towards digital channels even more in the future”, Alexandra continues “That’s the generic trend, but we still see the importance of our stores which is also related to the category. A bra, needs to fit well, feel comfortable and a lot of women still like to get fitted and try it on before purchasing. The great thing about Hunkemöller is that everything we sell, we design ourselves. You can buy a bra elsewhere, but you can’t buy a Hunkemöller bra. When we notice that certain collections are overperforming – for example, the Private collection which had a big push since Corona – we look whether we can do more in that area to grow this opportunity. In addition to that, sustainability is a big topic which Hunkemöller never used to talk about, due to the sensitivity around it, but we want to share that journey with our customers. I know we can’t change the world on our own, but we can play our part, and stimulate others to do the same. We hugely rely on our consumers for insights and new ideas to guide us further in our journey to success. Hunkemöller has a never-ending curiosity and a huge appetite for growth.”