Branding Comparisons between stores
The clothing store that I will focus on is Hot Topic. This store is known as a clothing store but it also sells CD’s, candy, and toys. The demographic for this store is mostly young people age 13 – 24 that could be categorized as being emo, scene, skater, goth, metal head or other extreme styles. People come to buy band t-shirts or other stylish clothing and CD’s. Hot topic is alos selling pop culture clothing like world of warcraft t-shirts featuring Invader Zim or Hellos Kitty. All the music sold in this store is aimed at young people, with bands in the genre of metal, post hardcore, and rap.
If Hot Topic had to be a person I would think that the store is most closely related to Marilyn Manson the American rock singer who is well known for his strange persona and style of clothing. The reason I chose him is because Hot Topic is not ordinary clothing or styles, it’s more like taking it to the extreme with a new style. The style of music he creates is something that hasn’t been done; it’s a separation from the past good morals. The music is different and can be seen as obscene, one reason why is his name which was taken from mass murder mastermind Charles Manson and actress Marilyn Monroe. A lot of the clothing is dark and gives you this eerie feeling when looking at it yet there’s also Hello Kitty shirts as well. The person of Marilyn is seen as a mixture of twisted yet innocent so I find a match between these two.
Stores with similar demographics that seem very similar to me would be Pacsun, Zumiez and Spencers. Pacsun and Zumiez sell skater and snowboarding clothing lines which is also seen in Hot Topic. Spencers is a gift shop that sells funny shirts, posters, toys, and books. The similarity between Hot Topic and Spencers is the t-shirts at Spencers have jokes about sex, drugs, drinking and other mature topics which were similar to the dark and evil tees at Hot Topic. Spencers also sells band t-shirts similar to those found in Hot Topic. Many of the shirts at Hot Topic have a wide variety of Illustrations with many bright colors that really make the image stand out, yet also have shirts with very dark images or designs to have variety in there store. With Spencers the clothing does not seem to be varied like this. Spencers is mainly aiming to find appealing and funny gift ideas that just happens to closely relate to Hot Topic. Though I would have to say the demographic for Spencers aims at an age group a little higher than that of Hot Topic.
When comparing Pacsun and Zumiez to Hot Topic which have even less similarity than Spencers to Hot Topic I looked at the different clothing lines and noticed many of the same brands in all stores. Similar shoes in all stores that I found are Vans and Converse. I also found the clothing brands Adidas and Zoo York to be in all three stores. Zumiez and Pacsun are probably more related to each other than to Spencers or Hot Topic because they pretty muched shared their clothing lines. They had clothing with minimum Illustrations and focused more on designs like striped shirts and jackets with blue or black jeans. Both stores sold Element Hoodies and hats as well.
Marilyn Manson and Hot Topic shirt Illustrations.
Examples of illustrations to do with branding concepts:
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