Stone Island Special Project.

Final Thesis: Stone Island marketing & communication restyling with implementation of second hand marketplace.

Abstract.

The joining of Moncler and Stone Island symbolized strength and togetherness in a time needed most. The two Italian brands merged after the extensive covid crisis that hit Italy in early 2020 and the financial crisis that followed it. But how will Stone Island stay true to its vision after this new chapter of being absorbed by a greater brand? The fact of the matter is, Stone Island will have to use their new luxury title to their advantage.

Owner group Moncler has made several promises to develop the Stone Island brand while keeping true to its original vision, mission, and values. However, well over a year later, the Stone Island brand has made no changes to its much-needed branding and online presence.

Many of Stone Islands’ qualities have been lost in translation, from current clientele ranging from English football hooligans to American street style, with age ranging from children to older men, it is almost impossible to know for who and for when the brand is making difficult to implement marketing strategies.

From target persona to occasion of use, our plan is to establish a communication strategy that depicts the brand for its innovative and utilitarian characteristics and to step away from the negative and inconsistent connotation they currently have, creating the basis for our brand restyling.

Stone Island is an Italian brand established in 1982 in Ravarino by Massimo Osti. His vision was to create a revolutionary lifestyle brand with a focus on innovative materials and unique dyeing techniques. After 40 years of business and a detrimental pandemic, the Stone Island brand has deviated from its original clientele and communication strategy. With static product presentation, indefinite style type and unclear target market, Stone Island’s extremely innovative and technologically advanced products are not meeting their full potential.
Within the brand’s current communication strategy, we find ad campaigns that are extremely product-oriented, leaving eyes to only focus on their “innovative technologies”. However, even with the main focus being the highlights of the products, there lacks brand awareness and connection creation with customers. This also causes issues with older and original clientele from when Stone Island was first founded. As the brand does not market to any age in particular, as well as having a style suitable for all ages, Stone Island currently lacks the communication techniques to connect with this age group of clientele, or any for that matter.
In favor of this special project, Stone Island is celebrating their 40th Anniversary this year, giving a great foundation and opportunity to bring change to the brand while also celebrating the past 40 years. In lieu of celebration, the brand has announced that they are pushing their sustainability efforts for all their future endeavors. We plan to create a project to kickstart their sustainability efforts, that we feel will help target all ages of our audience range. This special project will be the start of a secondhand marketplace controlled by the brand including a new communication strategy to gain awareness, in order to market the brand to gen z and millennials, as a way to better appeal to these generations.
With the acquisition from Moncler, there is newfound power and accompanying finances to take full advantage of a communication restyling and our special project implementation.

Presentation & Site

Presentation &
Mock Website.

In our final presentation, we have first highlighted the key points of our initial research that lead us into this direction for the project, followed by one of the brands key problems in their marketing strategy. We then go into our new marketing strategy to promote our project and a mood board to set the scene for the Nothing New campaign. On the 10th slide of the powerpoint begins the mock site for our campaign which will be imbedded into the current Stone Island website. Here customers can find the initiative for the Nothing New project.

Mock Website: Slide 10
First Tik Tok for the brand: Slide 17

The idea for our campaign video was to create the idea of a Stone Island customer sorting through their closet and “putting aside” their used Stone Island apparel in order to give the items back to Stone Islands Nothing New Project.