Integrated Marketing Communication

Final Paper

Case Analysis: Moleskine

Harry Febrian

A1128445

Graduate School of Journalism

Chinese Culture University

I. Introduction

Moleskine is a brand of design objects manufactured by Moleskine SpA, an Italian company

based in Milan. In the beginning, Moleskine product is mainly focused on notebooks and it’s

companion such as planners, diaries, sketchbooks and albums. But later, in 2011 the company

expanding their products and now also designs other objects connected to reading, travelling and

writing, including bags, reading glasses, pens, pencils, cases for digital devices, book lights, and

reading stands. 

1

One of the most notably feature about this brand is its history. The company claims that

Moleskine is the heir of the legendary notebook used for the past two centuries by artists and

thinkers, from Vincent Van Gogh to Pablo Picasso from Ernest Hemingway to Bruce Chatwin.

This claim drew some controversy. As Jason Horowitz noted in The New York Times, the brand

itself was officially registered in 1996. The company claims that it’s merely continuing the

notebooks tradition as the great writers mentioned above. Based on the company official website,

the story goes like this:

In the beginning, the anonymous and essential little black notebook, with its unique rounded

corners, elastic closure, and expandable inner pocket, was originally produced for more than a

century by a small French bookbinder that supplied Parisian stationery shops frequented by the

international literary and artistic avant‐garde.

In the mid-1980s, these notebooks became increasingly scarce, and then vanished entirely. In his

book The Songlines, Chatwin tells the story of the little black notebook: in 1986, the

manufacturer, a small family-owned company in the French city of Tours, went out of business.

"Le vrai Moleskine n'est plus," are the lapidary words he puts into the mouth of the owner of the

stationery shop in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comédie, where he usually purchased his notebooks.

Chatwin set about buying up all the notebooks that he could find before his departure for

Australia, but there were still not enough.

Eventually, in 1997, a small Milanese publisher, Modo & Modo SpA brought the legendary

notebook back to life, choosing for it this literary name, thus restoring an extraordinary tradition.

Following Chatwin’s footsteps, the company claims that Moleskine notebook as a tool to

capturing reality on the move, preserving details, impressing the unique aspects of experience

2

upon paper. Moleskine, therefore, is an accumulator of ideas and emotions which are then

released over time. In this first year they sold around 5.000 of notebooks to Italian distributor. A

year later, the number already ballooned to 30.000.

Thus, in 1999, the distribution started to moves beyond Italy. First in United States of America

and Europe, eventually to Asia with its first stronghold in Japan. As the demand growing, Modo

& Modo SpA can no longer keep up with the production, so in August 2006, they was purchased

by French investment fund Societe Gerenale at price of 60 million Euros and change the name

into Moleskine SpA. Now, Moleskine productions were distributed in 22,000 stores acoss 95

countries. Today, the company promote Moleskine brand to be synonymous with culture, travel,

memory, imagination, and personal identity, both in real life and the digital world. It is a brand

identifying a family of notebooks, journals, planners and innovative city guides, adapted to

different functions. With a variety of page layouts, the company sells Moleskine notebooks as

the partners for the creative professions and the imaginary of our time: they are a worldwide

symbol of contemporary nomadism, closely connected to the digital world through a network of

websites, blogs, online groups and virtual archives.

3

II. Current Marketing Situation

There are huge gaps in market situation for analog notebooks in the years that Moleskine was

invented at 1997 and today’s 2013 digital eras. In 1997, internet are still considering as a baby

and not even a mobile phone are considered to be an important things for society. But less than

two decades, the situation are upside down now. The advanced of technology has changes a lot

of human way of interaction, and notebooks are not free from it.

Now days, we see there are a lot of more convenient tools to do what the previously notebooks

task: writing, taking a notes, drawing and sketching. Forget about the Personal Computer and

laptop. Now smartphones and tablets devices are taking away the role of notebooks. With it

digital promises of convenience and efficiency, the devices provide a huge challenges for

traditional notebooks. Why still carry a traditional notebooks when you already have an Ipad or

Samsung Galayx Notes that can do more? Thus, we can say the first biggest challenge for current

marketing situation for Moleskine is the inevitable coming of the digital era.

Beside of the technological advancement, the already small and specified market in traditional

notebooks also coming with high-style competitors such as Guildhall and Markings. Although

Moleskine is still the market leader, with stabile revenue growth. For example the company

revenue in 2006 was around $100 million, but in the 2010, it risen up to $250 million. Another

data from Industry research organizations IBIS world showed that Moleskine revenue in 2011

was up as high as 25%. Beside of revenues, the annual sales also still having a good time beside

of high challenge, it is consistently up for average 26% for the past five years. To give

Moleskine financial performance a context, it it important to note that at the same time, in year

2012, the revenue from stationary manufacturing industry are predicted to down as much as

4

2,1%. But nonetheless, it is undeniable that the competition situation now must not be taken

lightly or Moleskine might suffered a loss in financial performance.

The third challenge also come from the variety of more cheaper notebooks that available in

market now. Although they target a different market segmentation, but if Moleskine are not

careful enough it its branding, they might loose some potential market whose see that cheaper

notebooks are more reasonable in this digital era. If Moleskine don’t pay attention, this cheaper

company might reduce the already high sales of Moleskine notebook, which now exceeding 10

million notebooks per year.

Last but not least, current marketing situation that coming from external factors that needed to be

paid attention by Moleskine is the economic crisis that still happen in Europe and America. This

can indirectly have an effect on Moleskine, since it’s a tertiary product that is more likely be last

priority when the economic situation is difficult. Because in this hard situation, people tend to

prioritize their primary and secondary need, rather than tertiary and premium items such as

Moleskine product. Because Moleskine was sold to international market, especially in Europe

and America, this situation deserved a high attention from Moleskine

5

III. SWOT and Market Analysis

One of the most useful tool on in Integrated Marketing Communication is SWOT analysis or

Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This analysis, both from internal or external,

help to evaluate the further strategy to strengthen Moleskine as a brand and also as market leader

in traditional notebooks. So the very basic or essence question that must be addressed first it:

a) Where Moleskine stands?

It stands on iternational brand which focus on notebooks and its companions for people who care

for culture, travel, memory, imagination and personal identity.

b) What is Moleskine goal?

Since the brand is already pretty well known by people especially for its community fans, one of

the most important goal is to keep the Moleskine brand relevant in this digital era. Beside of

maintaining the brand as a premium traditional notebooks, it’s also important for Moleskine to

adapt itself into more technological savvy. They also trying to attract new costumer, the later

generation who already born in the iPad and other tablet era and don’t have too much connection

with the traditional notebooks.

c) How to reach the desired Moleskine goal?

There are several creative ways in branding strategy, community development, and also selling

strategy to achieve the goal mentioned above. Several strategy was developed after doing the

analysis. In here some brief strategy will be mention and later will be elaborate more in and after

SWOT analysis sections. One of the most urgent strategies is to develop a hybrid between

technological and traditional tools to grab the attention of both of generation. One vivid example

is the Moleskine Evernote. It combine the traditional Moleskine notebooks character with the

augmented technology that help the user to transfer the content to the digital devices.

d) How to evaluate Moleskine performance?

Evaluation for the Moleskine performace can be done in several ways. First, of course by the

financial performace such as number of annual sales and a revenue and profit. Second is by the

6

number of engagement in several Moleskine digital devices such as a number of site visitor and

applications download. And the least measurable but also important is the satisfaction feedback

from the user that can be seen in Moleskine social medias and other interactive and internet base

services.

Now to take more detailed information for Moleskine SWOT strategy analysis, we will look

down each of the aspect from Moleskine situation.

1) STRENGTH

a) Strong Brand Awareness

Moleskine already well known as a cultural icon for writer, artist, and other creative profession.

For at least 16 years with historical romanticizing that goes into Pablo Picasso and Ernest

Hemingway. In boosting their brand values, Moleskine also do a lot of event for this creative

community. For example, they created a travelling exhibiton called Detour, which features a

notebook creations by internationally recognized artists, architects, film directors, graphic

designers, illustrators and writers. This event already held in eight cities worldwide including

New York, Istanbul, and Shanghai. Furthermore, they introduced their brand new product and

design at the prestigious Milan Design Week. Moleskine also work together with the famous

Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York to collaborate to make a new design. Moleskine

also make a special edition to commemorate the 40 th anniversary of the cultural icon music

concert, the Woodstock.

b) Excellent Quality

As a premium products, Moleskine are well known for its quality. All of the Moleskine product

are design it Italia and some manufacturing is done in China. First of all, Moleskine are famous

for its quality control over a very complex manufacturing process, a mixture of hand

craftsmanship and industrial production. To guarantee the quality, every piece of the Moleskine

notebook has an identification number that lets customer to trace its production history, so they

can address any quality issue that may arise. They also set an internet system that let customer to

fill the online form and the customer just need to fill it and attached the digital photo that shows

the problem and the Moleskine will contact them to arrange changes it with the new product.

7

For the material, Moleskine notebooks utilized from all around the world. Certain components

come from Italy and France, others come from Japan and from South Korea, Vietnam, China and

Taiwan. Beside of that, all of Moleskine notebooks are made with acid-free paper; the

manufacturing process of that variety of paper is environmentally friendly.

c) Market Leader

Although there’s no specific market research for traditional notebooks, based on its financial

performance, Moleskine still considered as the market leader and still leaving the competitor

such as Guildhall and Markings behind

d) Technological Adaptive

Moleskine can be said as the first traditional notebook company that see the threats and also

opportunity that came along with the digital era. This make them swift in making the survival

strategy for digital era. Beside of the Moleskine Evernote products that already mentioned

above, they also make several product to make a strong impression of their technological savvy-

ness, such as a cover for the new iPad and Amazon Kindle, notebooks applications for Android

user, and also application development for digital devices. Moleskine also make a full use of the

internet and social media. They have dozen of fans blog and more than 50 Facebook groups, all

dedicated to the fans of Moleskine.

2) WEAKNESSES

a. High Price

A common problem for premium items is the price that are more expensive than a normal one.

Indeed, for a price of $20-$40 dollar for its product, it is very expensive for a traditional

notebook.

b. Piracy

Moleskine actually have a patent for it exclusive design. But you can find some illegal product in

market that imitate the Moleskine with cheaper prize and lower quality.

c. China’s Manufacture Controversy

8

Moleskine decision to move some of it manufacture process to China in around 2006-2007 made

a quite controversy for user who care for its quality. Indeed, in some website and and fans base

community, this decision is considered a disappointment and some suggesting to leave the brand

for other similar product that are more cheaper.

3) OPPORTUNITIES

a. Increase in Asia market

In Asia, especially in China, India, Indonesia and another market who enjoyed a good financial

performance. This can be an opportunity for Moleskine to boost it performance. And some move

are already been made for the company. For example they already set the website for Asia

market with several language such as Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese and others. They also

expand several promotional event to focus in Asia market.

b. Room for diversification

Moleskine also have an opportunities to grab more diversify market. For example, up until 2011

the sales from non paper product only contribute 6% to company annual sales. Since Moleskine

also starting to expand their product not only a notebooks, but also others such as reading light,

iPad cover etc. this can be a good chances to boost it performance.

4) THREATS

a. Decline in western market

In the same time as the opportunity in Asia increase, the market in western is doing the other

way around. The effects of financial crisis in Euro zone and America, still give a threat for

Moleskine performance since this was their original market. Logically, in time of economic

difficulty, people will focused more on their primary needs, and not the tertiary and premium

thing such as Moleskine.

b. More advancement of technology.

The iPad are only introduce in late 2010, but only in 2-3 years, the impact is already very big.

There also some prediction in the near future that people will be more rarely use the paper based

book.

9

IV. IMC Strategy/Positioning Strategy

The purpose of the IMC strategy is to maintain, develop, boost distribution basis for outlet scale.

Initially, the company applied the communication strategy in order to make the potential buyers

to be more familiar with the products and its packages. In this IMC strategy, the approach is

more comprehensive and holistic. Now days, it is not enough only doing promotion and

advertising in fragmented way.

As a creative company, Moleskine has also been implementing IMC strategy, it is especially

obvious through Promotional Mix which is considered able to do more comprehensive

promotion strategy for Moleskine. The promotional mix is done by several ways, as followed:

1) Advertising

As a mass product, Moleskine is targeting a mass consumer market. One of the common way to

strengthen the brand awareness up to succeed customer loyalty is doing advertising in several

media both internationally or globally. Advertising by definition is any paid form of nonpersonal

communication about an organization, product, service, or idea by an identified sponsor. They

mainly do it in various media, but with emphasize in printed and electronic. Although the main

focus of Moleskine is to strengthen the community of its user, advertising is not treated as a

secondary tools. As a company who deals in creative industry, Moleskine do make their

advertising very seriously. For example, the image below is one of advertising of Moleskine

which is published in several media.

10

11

12

As we can see, the first two images are representing several values of Moleskine that are

translated into advertising. The ski image and flying books are representing the spirit of freedom

and personal journey that are fun. In the right side of each picture there are one black line which

represent the very unique features of Moleskine notebooks, the black rubbery elastic closure.

In the third and fourth image, it represent the value of Moleskine as notebooks that help creative

people to get an idea, represented by lasso and box trap made from Moleskine notebooks as the

metaphor of catching an idea.

2) Direct Marketing

Direct selling is applied by the company to bring the messages to the public easier and faster

since the potential customers do not have to go or visit the outlets for seeing whether there are

new products or not. One of the most basic way to do this is by providing a newsletter and

catalog, which is already done by the Moleskine. For example, if we registered to get the

newsletter, Moleskine will deliver us an update for their every new collection or any event or

promotion.

3) Publicity/Public Relations

The company uses publicity and public relations as the tool for delivering the messages and

positive images to the public. Moleskine is known for its creativity to create some events which

involve the community participation, the company usually give a press release that announces to

the media both internal and external.

One of the famous event that attracts a lot of coverage in press is Moleskine Detour. Curated by

Raffaella Guidobono, this travelling group show features notebook creations by internationally

recognized artists, architects, film directors, graphic designers, illustrators, and writers. Some

works contain extensive stories; others are turned into pieces of contemporary art and design.

This Detour events have already taken place in London (2006), New York(2007), Paris(2008),

Berlin (2008), Istanbul (Spring 2009), Tokyo(Fall 2009), Venice (Summer 2010) and Shanghai

(Fall 2010), Sao Paulo (Fall 2012). Beside of that, this event also become an opportunity for

Moleskine to support lettera27, a non-profit Foundation.

13

14

15

4) Sales Promotion

Moleskine sometimes also used this tools to boos it selling. For example, in their program

Addicted to Moleskine, give an insentive and discount for heavy user of Moleskine notebook

who usually use and need the notebook in large quantity. Beside of discount, user who registered

in this program can also have an value added service such as automatic delivery according to the

quantity and interval we already decided.

5) Interactive/ Internet

To proves their adaptiveness in digital era, Moleskine make a full use of internet and another

interactive way to engage with their consumer. For example, their website give a feature of

online shopping in which custumer can select and browse all of the Moleskine collection. Beside

of this, Moleskine also give some free downloadable template for Moleskine notebook and also

some downloadable bookmark design by various designer.

Beside of the website, the company also set several community blog, which run by and for the

Moleskine fans such as Moleskinerie.com. Beside of that, they have a official account in almost

all major social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and others services. The company

make use all this social media to promote their new product or program, engage the audience and

also to give a direct service for customer. The Moleskine staff will immediately answer or reply

any question from customer regarding their product and event.

16

V. Tactics and Action programs

1) Specific tactic (s)

As the creative company, Moleskine make sure that they apply several tactics and action

program to achieved their goal.

a. One of the tactic and action program the company are applying is Experimental

Marketing. This kind of method are giving the privilege for consumer to customize the

product as they like the most. For Moleskine, this means give the consumer an

opportunity to design the cover and also the layout of their notebooks, without

eliminating the unique features of Moleskine. They executed this through the My

Moleskine MSK program. With this, Moleskine give several downloadable and

customize-able template of the notebooks pages and encourage the customer to share

their design. In doing this, the company are benefited for at least two things. First, they

can get a lot of free ideas of design and layout that might help them to create the new

products. Second, they can grow the sense of belonging and community in their customer

mind.

b. Just like mentioned before, the company also very diligent in making several creative and

cultural event such as Detour. This is very important to keep and maintain their value of

personal identity, spirit of freedom and sense of culture and travel.

17

VI. Evaluation

Considering some IMC strategies that already applied by Moleskine, they actually already do it

in a good way and in the track. This claim can be supported by the financial performance of the

Moleskine, which show a good result compare to the competitor and also industrial

performance .But still, after analyzing the strategy that already applied by them, there are several

evealuation and suggestion so the company can maximize what that already considered as a good

IMC program. These suggestion are:

a. To maintain the quality despite of the China manufacture controversy.

For the premium brand such as Moleskine, who sold product with much more expensive than

average price, the quality that consumer needs is very important. People are willing to pay more

price because they believe they got a better product quality than the average one. So the decision

to move some of the manufacturing to China are understandably give some doubt for the

consumer about the quality it will produce in the future times. Although the company reason that

they chose China because its long history with paper making (China is considered as the first

country which invented the modern-like paper), they still have to deal and make sure of the

quality control..

b. To be more adaptive to the technological advancement.

The biggest problem for Moleskine also come from the external factor. Technological

advancement that become more faster now days, must got a big attention from Moleskine as a

traditional notebooks maker. Until now, it can be said that the company is already have a good

adaptation skill with diversification of their product and engage more in the digital application.

But if they don’t pay attention enough, it will be very likely that they are lacking the speed to

follow the digital trend. This might made them become more irrelevant and obsolete in this

digital era.

18

VII. Conclusion

Seeing the brand financial performance and also the reception from consumer and marketing

industry, it can be said that Moleskine are still successful in doing their branding. People

sometimes dubbed their brand as the Apple of the Notebooks, referring to the Apple Inc with

considered have a very premium and good reputation as the brand. This success mainly came

from their ability to control their product quality and also guarding their fundamental value that

highlight the consumer sense of personal identity, spirit of freedom, culture and travel. Their

adaptive ability to deal with the digital advancement is also the main strength of Moleskine is

preserving their brand. Although there are some controversy and difficulty, Moleskine still can

prove that their presence as a traditional notebooks is still relevant in this digital era. This are the

good start up for the company to maintain their dominance in the market. To make sure the

continuity of this right direction, Moleskine must maintain and also improve their strategy and

continue to adapt with the ever changing environment

19

VIII.References

Belch, George, and Michael Belch (2009), Advertising and Promotion: An

Integrated Marketing Communications Perspective, 8th Ed., NYC: McGraw-Hill

Irwin.

www.moleskine.com

www.moleskinerie.com

http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663497/unify-simplify-amplify-how-moleskine-gets-

branding-right

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/06/12/resurrecting-moleskine-

notebooks.html

http://www.onewomanmarketing.com/moleskine-creative-marketing-for-the-internet-age

20