H&M's way to get fashion blog exposure

H&M is another fashion retailer that is successfully using e-marketing to its advantage. The Swedish company is using global online experience involving social media applications to help push its Autumn Fashion collection. This social media application was developed as part of the new website concept. This application, which is available globally on H&M’s website is called ‘Blog This’ and includes an easy to use tool that allows the user to create a collage out of their favorite clothes in the most recent H&M collection.

This is an example how it could look like:


Once the collage is done, the user can click on 'Post To Blog' and receives an image that can be posted on the fashion blog:


I see this social media application as a highly innovative and creative idea that will help H&M to increase its blog exposure. Besides that, users can put together their favorite outfits and automatically receive the total purchase price of the outfit. In countries such as Germany this seems to be an important feature, as customers can use the webshop to buy their favorite outfits right away. Good job H&M!

American Apparel rated as Top Apparel Online Advertiser

Going through some of the fashion blogs I'm reading on a regular basis, I have realized that more and more leading fashion companies such as H&M and American Apparel are using online display ads in popular fashion blogs to build brand awareness and attract new customers. As I have stumbled upon American Apparel online ads not only in fashion blogs but also in other social media such as facebook, I was curious to see if there is some data or information on American Apparel's e-marketing strategy.

Doing my research, I was surprised to see that American Apparel ranked as the top advertiser using online display ads among apparel retailers in the United States in 2008. According to a study based on data from the comScore Ad Metrix service, American Apparel delivered 483 million ads in April 2008, reaching 49 million internet users an average of 9.9 times during the month.

While American Apparel is doing an amazing job using social media as the primary vehicle to drive its ad campaigns to build a strong presence among its core customers of young adults, many big retailers are still missing the opportunity to reach a generation that has grown up with the internet. Although the big retailers will probably follow the trend within the next couple of years, I think they will have a hard time catching up with companies such as American Apparel who have significant experience in e-marketing.

This is one of the online ads that I've stumbled upon on fashiontoast.com:

Welcome to School of Fashion!

While looking for an appropriate name for this blog, School of Fashion ended up to be the natural fit for it. Why? That's quite simple. First of all, I love fashion and I want to work in this exciting and fast moving industry. Why school? I want to learn more about the trends and innovations in the e-marketing area of this industry. By writing this blog, I hope to gain some more insights about the key success factors as well as the faux-pas in this area.

Please come and join me for this experiment!