Masters of earned media. Exhibit B: Spanish retailer Zara.

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

• Did you know that Spanish global mega retailer Zara -possibly the most successful and profitable purveyor of clothing in the world- has never spent a single dollar/euro/pound/peso in advertising?
• Lemme take a step back: last week I attempted to dissect the logic behind Donald Trump’s defeat over the mightiest electoral machinery ever built by man or woman, aka the Clinton Clan.
• My conclusion, in a nutshell: the president-elect defeated an opponent who outspent him by three to one thanks to his hyper availability, his ability to hijack the 24-hour news cycle and occupy the center stage through earned media.
• No new news there.
• I did point out though that the new commander in chief’s earned media MO was not too successful when he applied it to non-political business ventures, namely Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, Trump University and an array of other fiascos.
• You know what they say, the problem of good advertising is that it only accelerates the failure of a bad product.
• Enter wildly successful Spanish retailer Zara.
• Zara has never spent a dime in so-called “paid media”.
• Never ever.
• It should give us marketers & advertisers pause.
• Big time.
• Zara puts a lot of time and effort in earned media though.
• Zara, should you want to know, is the crown jewel of the Inditex portfolio of brands.
• Inditex is the parent company of a number of marques & griffes owned and operated by reclusive magnate Amancio Ortega out of his HQs in A Coruña, España.
• Mr Ortega’s Inditex literally revolutionized the garment industry with its keen, hyper adaptive instincts to ride up & coming fashion trends and its disruptive, laser-fast design, manufacture & distribution methods.
• Kicking dust in the faces of the likes of Banana Republic, Gap, Levi’s and the like, thanks to its crazy short inventory cycles and its ultra-nimble supply chain.
• It takes Inditex as little as two weeks to develop and ship a new product, as opposed to the industry average of six months.
• See, Inditex breaks all the rules.
• Its manufacturing footprint comprises work-at-home seamstresses in small towns in Galicia, Spain, and huge, fully robotized factories in the Far East.
• Inditex’s Zara has prominent, strategically located flagship stores in the four corners of the planet.
• Plus small boutiques and mid-sized stores for men, women, kids, casual, formal and home décor.
• Never heard of it?
• C’mon.
• D’you live in a Tupperware container?
• It is a global juggernaut analyzed in business schools the world over.
• Once again, here’s a massive behemoth of the retail industry that DOES NOT DO ADVERTISING.
• No TV, no print, no billboards, no bus shelters, no web banners, no native ads.
• Of course, the fact they do not promote their products in conventional ways does NOT mean they are not aggressive marketers.
• They’ve made the possibly intuitive, most likely empirical yet highly strategic decision to rely ONLY on POS imagery and collateral.
• Their media plan is the strategic locations of the stores they own and operate.
• Window dressing taken to 11.
• Its stores are its ads.
• Which begets word of mouth.
• AKA social media.
• AKA earned media.
• Real estate and free publicity.
• Quite similar to a certain orange-haired soon-to-be leader of the free world, huh?
• Paradoxically, Mr. Ortega is the polar opposite of our new president-elect: he’s reclusive, camera shy, never talks to reporters and is truly a billionaire, consistently ranked among the top three richest dudes in the planet for the last 15 years or so.
• Unlike the POTUS who just played a billionaire on TV.
• It must be said that Zara is, in a way, a non-brand.
• Or a me-too brand.
• Its supply chain genius tells only half of the story.
• Zara imitates more expensive brands and purveys them at cut rate prices, in an industry where intellectual property is fuzzy and fleeting.
• Zara rarely creates, if ever, trends.
• A serial purveyor of imitations, yet savvy enough to avoid trademark or IP infringement.
• Zara products never display its logo prominently, quite the contrary.
• Sort of like a kosher knock-off.
• A counterfeit without the stigma.
• A designer brand for the masses.
• Anecdote: a few years back, Spanish fashion designer Custo Dalmau, of glitzy Custo Barcelona fame, accused his down-market competitor Desigual of plagiarizing his designs and selling them at lower prices.
• Next thing you know Desigual’s inventory was flying off the shelves.
• Consumers can be quite cynical.
• See, knock-offs give us the best of both worlds.
• The gratification of wearing a designer brand product or carrying a designer brand accessory without having to pay the prohibitive price.
• Pleasure without guilt.
• Gratification without the effort.
• Champagne at the price of beer.