On your reading list: Influencer Marketing

If you’re anything like me you constantly have a backlog of links saved in a ‘to read’ folder in your inbox, in an app on your iPhone and in a variety of reader tools on your web browser. I even have word documents with multiples of them pasted in for when I can’t get online during a flight, and numerous printouts just in case I get caught out some other how and can use the time to finally catch-up with what’s going on in this ever-evolving world.

The good news is I just had a great occasion all to myself to do so (namely a long haul journey during waking hours). While you likely won’t appreciate me adding to your own reading list, there’s a couple I had to share on the off-chance you haven’t yet got to them yourself. The first is this story on dispensing with the division of church and state, or editorial and advertising in the fashion media business, written by Jeremy Langmead of Mr Porter in a guest post for The Business of Fashion. This one on Facebook’s shifting marketing strategy – a mega read from Vanity Fair – is another example.

But if I can implore you to read any, it’s this one about influencer marketing by Macala Wright, published on PSFK in March. The title reads: “Why influencer marketing is failing in retail”, which is actually a little misleading. This piece isn’t so much of a downer on why the retail industry isn’t nailing its strategic partnerships with today’s bloggers, but a fabulous insight into how to go about getting it right for your brand specifically.

It was written soon after Suzy Menkes’ piece on The Circus of Fashion Week – a story that sparked a boatload of comment from other heavyweights in the space. But it takes a more strategic route, stepping beyond debates on ‘gifting’ for instance, and looking directly at “redefining and compartmentalising how to leverage influencers in long-term brand and marketing strategies”.  It points out basic, but all-important arguments on quality (smaller people or influencers with cult followers) versus quantity (number of followers, views, and impressions), and rounds-up with nine key points to consider for success.

Check them out here: Why influencer marketing is failing in retail

Alice + Olivia, Topshop kickstart prom season with online push

A number of designers and retailers are reaching out to teens through a variety of online initiatives in the build-up to the forthcoming prom season.

Alice + Olivia is one such example; utilising social media to do so. The brand’s designer and founder Stacey Bendet is hosting a live Twitter chat on Tuesday, April 2 at 3pm EST. She will be answering questions and giving styling tips to help shoppers achieve the “perfect prom look”.

Users can submit questions via the hashtag #askstace.

Topshop is also looking to prom with a series of store events held in specific cities during March (three in the US and five in the UK), and a collection of dresses, accessories and shoes inspired by a touch of Kurt Cobain grunge.

All of that is tied together with online content including the below film from director Sean Frank. Referred to as a “vintage-inspired ride in getting prom perfect”, the clip is cast with a filtered light as the model is seen getting ready for the evening, dancing under a disco ball and ending up jumping in the swimming pool.

The British-based high street retailer has slowly been upping its focus on more holiday-based marketing – pushing out relevant collections around the likes of Halloween, holiday and Chinese New Year with dedicated campaigns. Doing so is of course further cementing its presence in the US market especially. Expect more to follow.

3.1 Philip Lim turns to “Trickers” for SS13 menswear video

 

3.1 Phillip Lim has proved an early addition to the onslaught of spring/summer 2013 campaign videos, with a beautiful spot for its menswear line that demonstrates martial arts tricking.

Shot by photographer Jacob Sutton, the film features real-life trickers Jason Mello and Micah Karns in action. As described by the Huffington Post, tricking is “a real-time, pan-athletic forum between floor gymnastics and martial arts skill, and extreme sports showmanship”.

It continues: “It’s like parkour without the cityscape, or half-pipe skateboarding without the board (or the pipe, for that matter). In tricking, the emphasis is on motion and creativity — and the more emphatically they’re delivered, the better.”

What better way to show off a new collection?

Romeo Beckham fronts SS13 Burberry campaign

Romeo Beckham has been announced as the spring/summer 2013 face of Burberry’s mainline campaign.

The 10-year-old son of David and Victoria Beckham, appears in a print image and short film (as below) shot by Mario Testino, which broke online earlier today.

He wears a signature Burberry trench coat while playfully pointing an umbrella at models Edie Campbell and Charlie France who appear alongside him. Tom Odell’s “Another Love”, which featured in Burberry’s SS13 show, plays over the top.

Future content released throughout the season will star other Brits including Cara Delevingne, Charlotte Wiggins, Alex Dunstan and Max Rendell, all of whom have previously featured in Burberry campaigns or runway shows.

Chief creative officer, Christopher Bailey, said: “This season’s campaign lights up with the infectious energy of an amazing young cast of old and new Burberry family. Cara, Edie, Charlotte, Charlie and Alex are joined by Max and Romeo, who was a joy to work with and really stole the show.”

The campaign is being rolled out across “all Burberry touch points and platforms globally”. That will include outdoor and print advertising, as well as Burberry.com, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Pinterest, Sina Weibo, Douban, Kaixin001 and Youku.

As with last season, consumers are also able to purchase the new collection straight from the images on Burberry.com as well as in stores.

Social media isn’t a 9-to-5 job in retail, especially at Christmas

That title should be quite an obvious statement to most, but a number of stores seem to need reminding of it in the busy run up to the holidays this year.

At a time when capturing consumer attention is fraught with more noise than ever, any sort of social activity that has the ability to cut through should not be restricted to the standard Monday to Friday routine. Yet many of them are…

Not to pick on John Lewis, but in this instance it’s the most obvious example. The UK department store has been running an advent calendar competition via Twitter with the hashtag #JLChristmas.

A nice incentive-based initiative (and no doubt a traffic driver), it invites @johnlewisretail followers to guess what festive treat is behind the door of its advent house to be in with a chance of winning it.

Every day between 10am and 3pm, it tweets out clues. At 4pm it then reveals the answer as well as a winner. Every day except Saturday and Sunday that is.

As the press release reads: “We won’t be running our competition on Saturdays or Sundays, but that means we’ll be giving away three lovely prizes instead of just one each Monday so there are even more chances for you to win.”

You could argue it’s because Mondays are the strongest selling days for e-commerce over the holidays, which would be fair. But in this case, that’s thoroughly illogical. If the aim was to increase traffic on a Monday you could still up the content on those days while maintaining the usual over the weekend too. For the record, eBay UK expected Sunday, December 2 to be its busiest online shopping day of the year.

So the simple answer, of course, is resources. Retail marketing is not a 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday job. It hasn’t been for a very long time. It certainly isn’t now, yet with social it’s frequently still seen like it is.

Customer service departments are a lot better at working around the clock (M&S has doubled the number of those in its e-commerce call centre), but enormous marketing opportunities are being lost by brands who only focus on pushing out messages at the times they’re also sat in the office. How many of the individuals on such teams then go home and browse through Facebook, or better yet do a spot of online shopping themselves I wonder?

And that’s exactly the point.

As Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation, famously said: “If you don’t come to work on Saturdays, don’t bother to come in on Sunday.” Not a bad takeaway for Christmas traders…

Yet to be seduced by shoppable advertising

There’s an interesting debate about shoppable videos in this week’s issue of Marketing Magazine in the UK. In it, I comment on why I’m not yet sold on the idea in its entirety.

Read the full story here – Branded content: watch before you buy – or see below for my extract…

Click-to-buy videos have grabbed the headlines as the industry tries to cash in on the growing appetite for highly creative and beautiful films, but I am unconvinced.

Most consumers do not want to watch a video, especially those any longer than 30-60 seconds, if they are trying to get something out of it. There’s a disconnection between viewing for entertainment and for purpose.

Shoppable content aims to capture consumers at the point of inspiration and the moment of intent, but to do so, it has to work – and easily.

This is not always the case, as one luxury brand learned last year when its shoppable ad simply didn’t work – there was not enough time for the user to move the cursor to click on the item being advertised before the frame changed.

Perhaps Target’s short-film series, Falling for You, provides a better example of where this trend is going to go. Its column running alongside the content featuring items from its collection is like a digital update on product placement.

The concept of the shoppable film is novel, but to work in the long run, it has to be fast, seamless and closer to the nature of online behaviour to have true and lasting cut-through.

Diana Vreeland documentary can teach the fashion industry something about marketing too

In the new Diana Vreeland documentary, The Eye Has to Travel, designer Diane von Furstenberg refers to the memos written by the late editor and museum curator, as being like a blog. “[Vreeland] was, in fact, the first blogger,” she jokes.

The wit, precision and bite-sized content of those memos however, makes that idea, albeit in analog form, not too hard to imagine playing out successfully online.

Vreeland wasn’t of course around to witness the explosion of the social web, but had she been a part of it, she most definitely would have done it better than anyone else.

The film itself, is truly incredible. As the write-up reads: “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel is an intimate portrait and a vibrant celebration of one of the most influential women of the twentieth century, an enduring icon who has had a strong influence on the course of fashion, beauty, publishing and culture.”

It continues: “During her fifty year reign as the “Empress of Fashion”… [she invited] us to join her on a voyage of perpetual reinvention and take part in the adventure of life. Through her trained and diligent eye, she opened the door of our minds and gave us the freedom to imagine. Her images and accomplishments are as fresh and relevant now as they were then, and her spirit is just as vibrant and relevant today.”

Part way through the film, one of the many high profile old colleagues, friends and family members (from Richard Avedon and Lauren Bacall to Hubert de Givenchy) featured, says: “She was about ideas, the magic of fashion.”

And it’s that that resonates.

It reminds us once again why the fashion industry can be so incredibly good at marketing: it’s all about storytelling and imagination. Or as Vreeland so aptly says in the film: “We live through our dreams and our imagination. That’s the only reality we ever really know…”

Most definitely something there to be learnt in how to approach digital strategy.

Go watch the film.

 

Warby Parker: style x tech perfection

“Geek chic” might be somewhat of a cliche, but it’s an appropriate term in more ways than one when describing eyewear brand Warby Parker.

The US-based company not only has stylish (and affordable) glasses for today’s hipster set absolutely nailed, but it’s a model example of a company using digital and technology to successfully market itself.

I actually only became truly familiar with the brand at SXSW where it hosted a “Citizen Circus”, a 1920s-themed space filled with live music, vintage clothing stalls, food trucks and of course the brand’s own product. During Internet Week New York this week, it then held a party with Refinery29 called “Style, Specs + Tech”. Both events left me wanting to learn more.

Fortunately that wasn’t too hard. Provide a check-list of top social media sites, and Warby Parker is present across them all: Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest and Instagram. Each is done brilliantly; tapping into the brand’s stylish existence, storytelling and building dialogue, while always looping back to a focus on exceptional customer service.

On that note, take its second YouTube account as an example. Here, short quirky video responses are posted to individual consumers. Some of them suggest which style to choose, other just say thanks for ordering (see below)… It doesn’t get much more personal than that.

In fact, ensuring satisfaction is seemingly seeded throughout the company’s business model. A wealth of innovative tech functions on its website help decision-making; rotating model shots for instance, or better yet, a virtual try-on tool.

And there’s also a service that enables shoppers to order five pairs of glasses to try-on for free at home. That may not seem about marketing directly, but the delivery encourages users to post photos of their options to Facebook. According to co-founder Neil Blumenthal, the average post then receives five comments, helping to publicise the products further.

The company is also tapping into the physical vs digital world in quirkier ways. Tomorrow its taking its love of Instagram onto the streets with a photo walk around New York. Following the success of a similar event held in January, it invites consumers to join for an “afternoon photo scavenger hunt beginning at Washington Square Park at 3:30pm, ending at our headquarters with Imperial Woodpecker Sno-balls”. Contest categories include ‘signs of summer’, ‘hotdog’ and ‘looking up’. Should make for some great Instagram content, not to mention further affinity with its fans.

If you still weren’t sure whether this is a good company to learn from, they also support a Buy One Get One model – for every pair of glasses sold they provide a pair to someone else in need, check it out. And why not order five pairs to try while you’re at it; I just did.

Calvin Klein unveils new Tumblr, launches partnership with blogger Hanneli

Calvin Klein revealed its first foray into the world of Tumblr this morning, with a new blog designed to give fans an editorial view of the brand.

CalvinKlein.tumblr.com will host current and archival advertising campaigns as well as inspiring visuals from the brand’s intersection with the worlds of art, architecture, style and music.

The launch is being fronted by a partnership with blogger Hanneli Mustaparta who will contribute content in her own #Hanneli tagged category.

She will be given behind-the-scenes access to the brand’s new collections, which she’s expected to review, style and photograph. She will also post about her interactions with the company’s creative directors and models, and her attendance at events in New York and abroad as a guest of the house.

The move follows Mustaparta’s role tweeting for the brand during New York Fashion Week in February.

The blog was announced by Calvin Klein’s EVP and chief creative officer, Melisa Goldie, during a talk at the Decoded Fashion conference in New York yesterday.

“We think that Tumblr is a perfect platform for us to explore the personality of the brand and accentuate our iconic imagery, and all of us at Calvin Klein are grateful to [Tumblr’s founder] David Karp for helping us to make our vision on Tumblr a reality.”

She confessed to being somewhat late to the Tumblr party, but insisted it was down to ensuring they had the ability to connect fans with the classic Calvin experience. “When you visit us on Tumblr, I think you’ll find we’ve done exactly that,” she added.

She also outlined the company has increased its financial commitment to online marketing from 1% in 2009, to 23% in 2012. “This will allow us to take maximum advantage of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, using each platform in a way that makes the most sense for our brand.”

Digital snippets: Kate Spade, Tory Burch, Coach, Madewell, Hermès, Gucci, John Lewis

Some more great stories from around the web surrounding all things fashion and digital over the past week:

• How social media helped Kate Spade become a global brand [Mashable]

• How digital marketing fuelled fashion label Tory Burch’s global expansion [Mashable]

• Coach releases Facebook app encouraging users to create animations from handbag tags (as pictured) [FashionablyMarketing.me]

• Madewell launches fun fashion choose-your-adventure video [T magazine]

• Hermès’ Paris Mon Ami campaign to run online with interactive ‘Scarf In the City’ game [Trendhunter]

• Gucci most searched fashion brand on Bing [The New Age]

• John Lewis launches 24-hour virtual shop [PSFK]

• GQ partners with new menswear site Park & Bond for pop-up shop in New York [WWD]

• Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Next rank top in m-commerce sites [NewMediaAge]