School of Fashion

Six Social Sites Every Fashion Marketer Should Know

2010-02-01T15:12:00.000-08:00

For nearly 100 years, the fashion industry was controlled by retailers, who decided what items from the upcoming collections are most relevant to their customer base. Today this is no longer the case – this is another proof that clarifies the importance of social media for today’s marketers.

I have been already blogging about the fact that social media has deconstructed traditional communication between retailer and consumers. Today a designer can easily communicate with her/his audience on a real-time basis through social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube Fansites etc. If designers do not join the online conversation with their audience, they will have a hard time to stay relevant. But there is one big problem in the fashion industry associated with that. While a designer doesn’t want to make her/his new clothes easily available in order to remain exclusive, he/she doesn’t want to be forgotten. Therefore, a marketer in fashion has to find the fine line between those two extremes.

Advertising Age has recently published the six social sites that every fashion marketer should know in order to keep up with the online discussions:

• Shopflick
• Us Trendy
• StyleCaster
• Sense of Fashion
• Est. Today
• Style Hop

I have decided to look into each of these over the next couple of weeks to see how useful they really are. Are these sites helpful for listening and engaging with your customer base?

Please stay with me.

Brand Republic: Being a fan on facebook

2010-01-07T21:30:00.001-08:00

Although I have been blogging before about how useful facebook can be for companies, i have found some research that is claiming the opposite. Brand Republic - a market-leading website for the online advertising, marketing, media and PR sectors - has recently done some street interviews in the UK asking people about their opinion and experience with fan sites on facebook.

These are the snapshots of the interviews:

According to this study people seem not to be really interested in becoming a fan of brands on facebook. These interviews were of course only made with a small group of selected people, so that one might argue that the results are not representative. Nevertheless, it seems to me that a majority of Facebook users (including me) don't see the benefit of becoming a fan of most of the brands on Facebook. This issue goes back to one of my previous postings about Victoria's Secret and Facebook. Facebook is only an effective marketing tool if the company finds a way to differentiate itself from its competitors on Facebook and clearly shows its customers the benefits of being their 'Facebook fan'.

But aren't companies dealing with the same issues in the offline marketing world too??! I think that with some creativity there are many ways to use Facebook to your advantage!

YouTube's biggest showoffs....

2009-12-05T20:10:00.000-08:00

A new fashion-related viral video trend are haul videos that are mainly posted on Youtube. People (predominantly teenage girls) talk in more or less short videos about where they just went shopping and show what they bought there. Some of them even mentioned prices of every single piece.

Fashion companies have been following the individuals that are showing off their merchandise. The industry is sceptical on using haul videos for advertising purposes. Although these videos can be used to gather some feedback from customers and fans, I think (and I hope) this tool will not make it into the tool mix of e-marketers in fashion companies.

Those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about have to see this video:

GAP sets benchmark for mobile marketing

2009-11-27T19:35:00.000-08:00

Since we have been discussing the possibilities of mobile marketing in our last e-marketing class, I was curious to see if there is a fashion company that makes use of this promising marketing tool. The company that I stumbled upon first was the Gap, which ended up being a pretty interesting story.

The fashion retailer launched a competition this summer asking people to come up with ideas about what GAP could be doing with the iPhone. The winner who was announced in August 2009 was a company called IntuApps whose ideas were later used for the development of an app called Gap StyleMixer. This is a short demo of the app IntuApps developed:

The final version of the social shopping app enables users to mix and matches clothes, find inspiration, get advice and more. StyleMixer can help the user to organize outfits that can be shared on Facebook to get feedback from friends. Users can even integrated clothes from their own closets. But the most revolutionary part of the app is the fact that the app unlocks special denim discounts when users are near a Gap store by using GPS technology.

And this is how the app and a discount look like:

I think Gap has done a great job in incorporating mobile technology into its e-marketing strategy. Gap fans can discover new trends and items and share it right away with their friends. However, many users have complained about the lack of items in this app. There is obviously no point in putting together outfits if there are not enough items to choose from. Especially with the store discount function, this app shows great potential for Gap. Nevertheless, the retailer has to make sure that a better selection of merchandise is included so that Gap fans can use it to its full extent.

Found via Mobile Marketer

From Couture to Conversation

2009-11-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

In my last post I have been blogging about a study that rated the digital competence of 109 luxury brands, some of them being fashion companies. The fashion company with the third highest rating (rank #11) was Gucci and today I totally understand why.

Gucci introduced its latest line of eyewear with a viral ad campaign by launching a website called guccieyeweb.com. This site lets visitors upload their own party pictures of which some of them will be chosen by Gucci and displayed on the website as if they were reflections in the various new eyewear styles. And this is how it looks like:

Patrizio di Marco, Gucci’s president, sees this initiative as a "tactical web promotion." According to him, guccieyeweb.com is a component of an integrated marketing plan for the launch of Gucci’s new youth-oriented sunglass collection. As social networking is an important activity for this target demographic today, this component has been the heart of the marketing plan. He also elaborates on the fact that the investment in building and maintaining this site equals to a handful pages in a traditional marketing campaign. Given that this site can be reached internationally, this investment can be highly efficient.

This is another example how companies step away from traditional marketing communication to more conversational marketing. This campaign is entirely build on customer involvement and would not work without customers' willingness to share their personal pictures. I am not sure if this campaign will be a success. What I am sure though is that Gucci will be able to easily track the conversion rate as each site of guccieyeweb.com shows the direct link to the online shop.

I could not hold off myself to test this website and to upload some of my pictures. Let’s see if I get picked by Gucci… I’ll keep you posted!

Found via The New York Times

Digital IQ Rating of Luxury Brands

2009-11-16T17:18:00.001-08:00

Trying to find the fashion companies who are doing a good job of exploiting e-commerce and social media opportunities, I have stumbled across a very interesting study done by NYU's Stern School of Business. This study rates the digital competence of 109 luxury brands in 11 categories grouped into four criteria:

1. Search Engine Optimization
2. Brand Translation
3. Leveraging the Medium
4. Social Media

The following table shows how fashion brands were ranked among other luxury brands:

Only Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren made it in the Top 10 of luxury brands that were rated in this study. I was not surprised that consumer electronics such as Apple (rank #1) are doing a better job in exploiting the Internet opportunities. But should automotive companies such as BMW (rank #2) and Audi (rank #4) perform better than fashion companies? Would we not expect fashion companies who are supposed to be the masters of image creation to rank higher?

The comment on Marc Jacobs online appearance: “no e-commerce capacity; site is little more than a digital runway show” was relatively brutal. I think that all the low ranked high-end fashion companies should definitely look into this study and try to benchmark and compare themselves with competitors inside and outside the fashion industry.

Marc Jacobs: Viral marketing in Fashion

2009-11-13T18:03:00.000-08:00

Marc Jacobs is a highly successful American fashion designer. Being the head designer for Marc Jacobs and the diffusion line Marc by Marc Jacobs, the designer is currently the Creative Director of the French design house Louis Vuitton. Last year Marc Jacobs used social media smartly to launch a viral marketing campaign. He decided to name a bag after a fashion blogger called Bryanboy after the blogger made this amusing documentary about the designer:

Once the bag was lauched, ad for the ostrich bag was built around Bryanboy:

This step has not only helped Bryanboy to become a star, who is now being invited to almost every fashion show but more importantly helped Marc Jacobs to have a free avalanche of publicity in the world of fashion. I think it was a brilliant idea to choose a controversial fashion blogger who is often described as the "gay version of Paris Hilton." I can clearly see a trend where companies tend to choose their best and most influential customers to use them for their ad campaigns. In my post about American Apparel using Chictopia to find models we could see a similar strategy. Social media is really changing the marketing world!

Book Report: Do It Wrong Quickly – How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules

2009-11-09T10:49:00.001-08:00

Mike Moran’s book ‘Do It Wrong Quickly’ is not just another book about Internet marketing. The title of the book might lead the reader to think initially this book is about mistakes that can be done in Internet marketing. However, the book describes how companies should not get caught up in having to do it right the first time. Rather than trying to do it right the first time and spending significant amounts of money on planning, Moran suggests doing small and quick experiments because doing something wrong quickly is far better than doing something right slowly.

Compared to other E-marketing books, Moran’s approach to Internet marketing is pioneering and simple at the same time. Instead of creating an annual marketing plan, Moran suggests to do quick experiments. In order to decide whether an experiment was successful or not, the company has to make sure that accurate measurement is set in place. If the metrics show that this approach was wrong, the book clarifies that this is not a disaster, as something new can be tested very quickly the next day. By experimenting on a daily basis, a company can gradually fine-tune its marketing to have the highest possible outcome. This approach might change the entire world of an E-marketer, who is used to plan ahead of time in order to make it right the first time. This implies a flexible and open company culture. If this is not the case, e-marketers might have to overcome obstacles to persuade their leaders to ‘do things wrong quickly’.

Do It Wrong Quickly: Applying The Three R's to a Fashion Retailer

2009-11-09T10:48:00.001-08:00

Moran also introduces the notion of the Three R’s of online marketing in his book, as an extension of the traditional Four P’s. As customers are nowadays overwhelmed with marketing massages, companies have to make sure that they are relevant, real and responsive. Although the Three R’s are not really new to Internet marketing, Moran provides new a perspective on it by suggesting achieving the Three R’s with quick experiments. What does this mean for example for a medium-sized fashion retailer?

First of all, the company has to be relevant to the target customer. Because customers choose relevant web sites through search engines such as Google, a fashion retailer has to make sure that target customers find their web site. Therefore, the company should test how it can be found through search engines. If the company does not come up on the first page of Google when using relevant key words, the company should consider building in the right key words into their web site or alternatively using paid search. After changes have been implemented, the company has to measure if the traffic on the web site has increased. If not, the paid search did not pay off or the key words were incorrect, and the company has to adjust it accordingly.

In order to convince consumers to become your customer, the retailer needs to be real. This is particularly important as Web 2.0 customers are highly informed and will call the company on every little lie. By telling the truth, trust and long-term relationships can be built. When applying ‘being real’ to a fashion company this can also mean talking to your customers like to real people, so that they’ll talk back. Many fashion companies (i.e. http://www.aritzia.com/blog or http://www.vagabond.com/blog/) that write company blogs are using a more ‘spoken language’ rather than a facts driven language. Aritzia's blog for example sounds usually more conversational:

This makes the marketing message more personal, so that customers are more likely to answer to it, which leads us to the third R. Once a customer gives feedback, the company has to be prepared to be responsive no matter if the feedback is positive or negative. It is especially dangerous if customer complaints are not answered quickly, as these will spread online very fast. Consequently, a fashion retailer has to make sure that all comments on the blogs, especially if these are requests or even complaints, are dealt with immediately. If the retailer is able to get the three R’s right, the company will be able to develop long-term relationships with its customers.

Do It Wrong Quickly: Converting Consumers to Customers

2009-11-09T10:47:00.001-08:00

The last point in Moran’s book that I want to elaborate on is conversion because this was one of the key takeaways for me from this book.

Why are companies doing Internet marketing at all? They want to convert potential customers into real, actual customers. As a result, Internet marketing is not only about increasing brand awareness, it is about getting new customers and retaining current customers to increase offline and/or online sales. This again shows how important result measurement is. Moran gives the reader a great framework for tying offline sales to the web. One way to track online conversion is to offer discount coupons on the web site asking customers to bring a printout to the store. H&M is using this method several times throughout the year in most of its markets. Here is one example:

Do It Wrong Quickly: Synopsis

2009-11-09T10:07:00.000-08:00

Mike Moran's book "Do It Wrong Quickly" has drastically changed my view of Internet marketing. As most Internet marketing tools are new and marketers yet inexperienced, the initial solution often ends up being wrong no matter how long the company is analyzing the alternatives. The idea of using quick experiments to test the online marketing tool is a great way to fail your way up to success. Companies still need to do things right offline, but it is much easier to fix a mistake online compared to the old marketing world where companies for example committed to running a failing TV ad for a year.

The only concern that I have is that it might not be as easy as Moran describes to convince the executives to agree to online experiments. Although he provides some great guidelines for this issue such as persuading your fellow leaders who are more adaptable, I am still not entirely convinced that there are not some companies where this approach would not work. Especially large and bureaucratic companies might not be able to do quick experiments without going through a long approval process.

American Apparel - a social media pioneer?

2009-11-06T18:57:00.000-08:00

Searching for innovative and pioneering fashion companies who are using social media to their advantage, I always end up finding American Apparel among them. The L.A. based company seems to have a good sense for fashion blogs and fashion-related social websites that are about to become ‘big’.

One example for American Apparel’s creativity in finding new ways to use social media was its partnership with Chictopia. Chictopia is a fashion community-based website that allows users to join the community and upload photos of their favourite outfits. The active community shares reviews and information about stores. American Apparel recognized this great concept at a time when Chictopia had only one fifth of the visitors it has today. The fashion retailer approached some of the fashionistas wearing American Apparel clothes on Chictopia and rewarded them with being a model for the company for a day.

In my view, American Apparel has done it right by integrating online with offline marketing. Also, the fashion retailer has done a great job in finding the influencers in the community, which wouldn't be different in offline marketing using the adaptation curve. This campaign is also a good example for the shift of marketing from one-sided communication to a (private) conversation between companies and consumers. This smart move has worked for American Apparel, although I am not sure if everything that the apparel retailer is doing in e-marketing is paying off. Also, this aggressive e-marketing approach might be not appropriate for smaller fashion companies who want to avoid mass marketing approaches.

Found via Mashable

Email that brought Hugo Boss 87% more Facebook friends in 1 day

2009-11-03T19:34:00.000-08:00

Building on my last post, I wanted to share with you a good example on how a fashion company attracts customers to join their Facebook fan site. Hugo Boss used a direct marketing method and increased its fan base from around 2,300 fans to more than 4,300 fans within a day, which is an increase of more than 85%! I don't know how large Hugo Boss' email list was, but I think it is still a large jump within a day. And this is how it looked like:

In my view this was a great method as it was only sent out to people who have agreed to receive the Hugo Boss newsletter. Therefore, it was not considered as spam. It was very personal (“meet new Hugo Boss friends”) and well targeted. If I had received this email, I would have felt honored to receive a personal invitation from Hugo Boss. The company did a great job in creating a user-friendly email that is clearly showing the contact details as well as links to online store and store locator.
One could argue that Hugo Boss is only targeting already convinced customers. I think, however, that people might forward this email to their friends (using the link “tell a friend”), who have not been in Hugo Boss’ database. Overall, a good execution of combining direct marketing with social media.

Do fashion brands need Facebook?

2009-11-01T19:35:00.000-08:00

Facebook being one of the social media sites with the highest traffic worldwide, I was curious to learn how strongly fashion companies are using the site within their online marketing strategies. According to Mediapost.com, fashion brands need Facebook, as it provides fashion companies a unique environment that is more powerful than traditional marketing. As also discussed by Mike Moran in his book ‘Do it wrong quickly’, Web marketing through social media allows customers to segment themselves based on their needs which he calls marketing personalization. And Facebook is a great example for this.

But to what extend do fashion companies need Facebook? I think fashion companies should not rely too heavily on sites such as Facebook, as it cannot replace traditional media. However, it is important to not underestimate the importance of having a facebook presence. Marketers need to consider this channel as a messaging opportunity next to other channels leveraging the fact that their customers have deliberately decided to become a fan of their favorite brand.

Pink, a Victoria's Secret Brand, is a great example how an apparel retailer can use Facebook effectively to reach a specific segment. Pink was able to attract almost 1.5 million fans by uploading for example fun videos about two guys travelling around USA. Some of them are really funny and definitely worth watching:

H&M's way to get fashion blog exposure

2009-10-31T00:01:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-28T00:13:00.001-07:00

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!

2009-10-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

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!