Parfums Cacharel, a division of L’Oréal, used to have a dominating position on the European market with both the number one and number two best-selling fragrances: Anaïs Anaïs and Loulou. At the time of the case however, sales were declining at a rate of 15 % per year and Cacharel was a fragrance brand in need of a major revitalization. The task assigned to Dimitri Katsachnias, the new general manager of Cacharel, is to turn around the business. But before doing that, he needs to understand the brand.
1. Brand identity decoding • What is Cacharel’s brand identity? What are its conceptual and tangible components? Can it be summarized in less than five words? • Does the Cacharel umbrella brand itself have an identity beyond that of its sub-brands? Which sub-brands are mostly responsible for creating Cacharel’s identity?
2. Brand revitalization • What is the root source of Cacharel’s maturity crisis and how can understanding the brand’s identity help? • Should Kataschnias bring the Cacharel brand closer to where the market is now? Should he focus on meeting the desires of today's consumers or in remaining faithful to the brand’s original identity?
On this website, instructors can also access video interviews with the managers mentioned in the case, more recent television commercials, and PowerPoint presentations to be used in the classroom or as handouts using the login and password mentioned in the teaching note.
The primary purpose of this case is to tackle notions of brand identity (the mission of the brand and its tangible elements) The main aim of the case is to involve students in Cacharel’s marketing strategy dilemma. • Make students think more deeply about what brand identity means • How this identity might be decoded by a new brand manager? • The strategic value of the decoding of brand identity in general compared to traditional market research methods. The case discusses the value of the internal brand identity audits versus external surveys of brand image. It shows how understanding a brand’s identity can help charter the brand’s territory, guide new product launches, and help manage the creative process under lying advertising and product design. This website supports the case studies by showing the history of print and television advertisements for all Cacharel brands, which serves for the brand identity audit. The restricted area of this website supports the teaching note and contains video excerpts from an interview with Dimitri Kataschnias as well as the new advertising for the relaunch of Anaïs Anaïs and for the new fragrances of Cacharel, Nemo for men, and the hugely successful Noa for women.
- Marketing
- Advertising
- Branding
- Brand management
- Luxury goods
- Cosmetics
- Perfumes
- Brand revitalization
