If you are unfamiliar with the company Popeye’s, they have been a solid fast food company that specializes Louisiana style fried chicken tenders and fried chicken sandwiches. Popeye’s has been in an ongoing battle over the last year or so with competitor Chick-Fil-A. The battle has been back and forth causing a dilemma over who sells the best fried chicken sandwich.
I am extremely intrigued as to why they decided to hop into the clothing market and I would love to know how people are responding to it. Popeye’s main value proposition is to marry innovation with value. Since they are considered a quick-service company, with short time to deliver their products to customers, they still value providing quality products to their customers. Now they are planning on marrying innovation with value with “That Look” from Popeye’s.
I decided to dive deeper into this Popeye’s clothing line thing and I found a few interesting things on Twitter in regards to it. I put the screenshots at the bottom of this post. Initially Popeye’s tweeted about this new clothing line on their companies twitter page. Abby Jasmine on twitter commented, “LMAOOOOOO NOT POPEYES SELLING KNOCK OFF IVY PARK”, which is in regards to Beyonce’s new clothing line Ivy Park. Beyonce recently just dropped some clothes that look very similar to “That Look”. Right away people are noticing that “That Look” isn’t very original in terms of innovation but it is new for a company known for chicken sandwiches that are now selling clothing. The next thing that seemed weird to me was when CNN’s twitter took a shot at Popeye’s and how “That Look” looks very similar to “Ivy Park”, pretty much roasting them for copying Ivy Park without actually saying anything brutal. This stood out to me because I always find it weird when one company goes after another company on social media. I personally think it is funny, but at the same time CNN should have kept their comments to themselves. Trying to tear down another company seems to make that company look bad and makes them seem like they just want attention on themselves. The third screenshot I attached to this post was tweeted by Karlous Miller.” His tweet says, “Bruh, Popeyes got a clothing line? That’s the definition of doing the most.” This is exactly what I was thinking when I heard Popeye’s was dropping a clothing line. Whether they are in that industry or not, this was an outstanding marketing choice by Popeye’s. Not only have they been all over social media with their fried chicken sandwich war, well not they are drawing even more attention to themselves and their company.
With dropping this clothing line I believe Popeye’s is really just trying to sell more of their chicken sandwiches and hopefully even sell some of their clothes.They planned this all along as a publicity stunt and it is working. Them doing this shines the spotlight on them even more than it had been previously and people are going to continue having “Popeye’s” coming out of their mouths or typed into words spread across social media. The market challenge facing the brand has to do with people not taking Popeye’s as a joke, but instead bringing in more customers by targeting different niches in the market. Targeting these different niches will help them continue to grow their customer base from both ends of the market that they are tapping into. How I know this will work is because them being in the spotlight the last year or so resulted in even MYSELF going to Popeye’s in Salem just to see what all the hype is about. I had been watching their war go on and finally I had to see what all the commotion was about. Now that they are throwing themselves back into the limelight, people (just as I did) are going to give in and try Popeye’s for the first time. After they try it the first time Popeye’s has the customer wrapped around their fingers because not many people can resist an exquisite fried chicken sandwich.
Since this is very fresh, I haven’t seen Popeye’s reply to any customers on twitter or facebook yet in regards to the clothing line. But what would you respond with when I am sure Popeye’s know that they copying Beyonce’s clothing line? They can’t deny it because then they would look like liars. We will see though because they just dropped their clothing line on January 28th. I don’t think that they should respond to customers calling them out because that will never do anything besides make them look bad for disrespecting someone on twitter. If I was the brand manager I would just say that it seems to be a coincidence that the two clothing lines are so similar. I would do just as they are and give it some time to respond and continue to watch and see what “That Look” does in the market. In the meantime proceed on to reply to customers with complaints and comments in regards to their quick-service food chain.
This assignment has helped me learn that being abstract and going in a different direction than what people expect of you can lead to a lot of publicity. I believe that all publicity is good publicity. Getting people to talk about your brand can only lead to more customers in most cases. I learned that branching out from the norm is a good way to keep yourself on the map once you have already got on there.
