Tactics > highlights from ECMOD


Creating W


hat’s in a name?


For Jessica and Jamie Seaton


the name of their


fledgling business was hugely important. It


was 1997 and the couple felt they were ready for a change—there was a new government and mail order, in the form of Boden and The White Company, was becoming a more aspirational way to shop. This was to be their second business, the first being a knitwear company called J & J Seaton that sold its jumpers into exclusive boutiques around the world. They were “eye-wateringly expensive,” Jessica Seaton said at her presentation Developing Iconic Brands at this year’s ECMOD Conference, and the Seatons felt their next business should sell directly to the consumer at a price that the Seatons themselves could afford if they were customers. They wanted full control over image, customer communication and price. Most of all though, the Seatons wanted to create a brand, something that didn’t trade on their name, but that took on a life of its own. They decided to sell pyjamas to take advantage of the trend in


home-working. The Seatons bandied about a number of names that didn’t quite fit, such as the “laundry library”. Eventually the name Toast dawned on Jessica one morning, “Toast pops up you might say,” she quipped during her presentation. Seaton said that the word “reminds you of breakfasts with time to spend reading newspapers, and chatting,” it’s also a word associated with celebrations. And so Toast, the brand, was born.


18


Nurturing the brand With a name decided on, the Seatons began to cultivate their image. They hated the “artifice of selling copy” and so their first ads in the classified sections of Sunday supplements were succinct—a far cry from their busy contemporaries. The first Toast ads had as little as 14 words and a telephone number. This tactic “cut through the chatter,” said Seaton. The words used emphasised Toast’s principles: simplicity,


Catalogue e-business www.catalog-biz.com


an iconic brand By Miri Thomas


Toast’s “nonmarketing marketing” key to the company’s values, says cofounder Jessica Seaton.


modernity, comfort and colour. These words are “our grounding—what we focus on, what we’re about,” she added. She called it “our nonmarketing marketing”. The Toast catalogue became a “brand ambassador” said Seaton. For each edition the Seatons made sure they took no design or photography shortcuts. Everything from the location of the shoot to the models used was chosen to “represent something other than just selling”. The first catalogue to be shot abroad was the spring/summer 2000 edition, which took the Toast crew to Lanzarote, “not a cheesy cheap tourist island but one of great beauty and eerie strangeness”. Subsequent catalogue shoots in Chile and Argentina established Toast as a catalogue with the production values of an upscale travel brochure and the brand became known for its exotic locations. Toast also became


respected for its fabrics and simple design. But it has a quirky side too. One year, the Seatons fell in love with an iridescent silk and metal tissue over soft cotton voile fabric and produced a skirt and a dress in the fabric, “even though it was neither washable nor dry- cleanable”. Customers bought it, and some still talk about it today, said Seaton.


When things go wrong Despite its reputation for moody catalogues and evocative photography, Toast isn’t always as on-brand as it should be, admitted Seaton. For example, a shoot in California on a film set appeared “false” and was all wrong for the brand. When asked whether customers were aware of the branding mismatch, Seaton’s reply was “very much so”. Customers still shop from the catalogue but sales “tail off” more quickly than if they would in an “on-brand” catalogue. “If the catalogue is right, there is more of a ‘motor’ behind it,” she explained.


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