Having an experienced fashion PR and integrated marketing agency is critical to your fashion house success. Whether you are an established fashion designer with a loyal following or an emerging fashion designer, all fashion designers share a common thread: they want to make their customers look fabulous on and off the runway and impress retail buyers. The question is: how does a fashion designer use marketing and fashion PR to distinguish their fashion brand on and off the runway? Here are our five makreting and PR methods for both established fashion designers and up and coming fashion designers to increase brand awareness.
Competitive Analysis
Great fashion houses like Escada, Gucci or Trina Turk like great fashion PR agenceis are not built over night. Fashion public relations and marketing should begin with research and competitive analysis. This goes beyond picking up the latest issue of ELLE or checking out WWD.com. The fashion industry has always been and always will be very competitive and that’s why research and competitive analysis is vital for your brand’s long term success. Looking beyond on the runway, some important factors to consider are:
- What designers or brands are competitors of yours?
- What makes your fashion design or fashion brand unique? Are you solving a specific problem through your innovative fashion design? Think Spanx!
- Develop buyer personas. In other words, who is most likely to buy your brand, and even go so far to define your buyer persona by seasonal line. (This is the end user, the person who is going to wear your product)
- Identify the top fashion influencers, fashion journalists, and fashion magazines that align with your fashion brand.
- Are they working with social media fashion influencers or brand ambassadors?
- Visit their showrooms in person, not just their Instagram pages.
Compile this information, revisit each season, and update often. Determining who your competitors are, where are they showing, where have they been picked up, and the overall success of their brand will provide you meaningful competitive insight. Hiring a marketing and fashion public relation agency to build, review, update and present on a regular basis is common so fashion houses can remain focused on what they do best.
Leverage Attractive Plus Size Models
The equation in fashion is simple: the more attractive the model the more attractive and flattering the clothes will look. However, brands that are steering away from the stereotypical ideals of beauty and embracing diversity of shape, size, and ethnicity, are experiencing increased positive fashion marketing and PR exposure and increased company and brand growth.
- Sports Illustrated made international headlines when they utilized a plus-size-model on their iconic Swimsuit Issue breaking all the traditional fashion PR rules.
- American Eagle Outfitters’ #AerieReal ground breaking campaign and line boosted their company growth by 4% last year. They used the below stats to their advantage and to great effect.
- Close to 50 percent of American women are a size 14 or above, if your designs aren’t including plus-size fashion are ignoring 50 percent of your potential marketing share.
Digital Fashion PR: Maximizing Social Media Exposure Beyond Just Instagram
Photos of models of all shapes and sizes wearing your current line should not be limited to your company website or static images on your boutique’s wall. Utilize digital fashion PR and post high-quality images of your clothing and the attractive models of all shapes, sizes, and ethnicities wearing them. Look beyond Instagram use Snapchat, and even Facebook video, to tap in to fashionistas around the globe. Since Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook are now both image and video focused, these are digital PR tools that are image focused with communities waiting to see the next trendy design. For example, up and coming fashion designer Carlton Jones utilizes his Instagram and Facebook to highlight his current collection with great success. Showcase your brand and engage with your potential audience and potential next customer with consistent high-quality images of your clothing, great captions, and relevant hashtags.
Not All Brand Ambassadors Are Celebrities: The Rise of the Social Media Influencer
For decades, celebrities have been and still are great brand ambassadors for many fashion designers and fashion houses. However, times have changes digital fashion PR has created social media fashion influencers and the term influencer marketing. Gone are the days that only celebrities shows your fashion brand to a broad audience, social media fashion influencers in some have cases have even greater reach than celebrities. One key aspect to consider is social media engagement. Instagram models and fashion bloggers can showcase your brand to a highly engaged audience; an audience that follow and listen to the infuencer on social media for fashion advice on what to wear and where to buy it from. More and more social media influencers are appearing at pop-up shops to promote a fashion brand in person and engage in person with their audience.
Fashion Marketing and PR: Putting it all together
Fashion marketing and public relations has evolved over the years just as fashion designs and designers do the same. However, there is one constant, a good fashion house is a good fashion house, just like a good fashion public relations agency is a good fashion public relations agency. Weaving fabric is not only for clothes, at Dreamweaver Brand Communications we weave your fashion house into your target audiences lives. Combining these fast five with an intimate or large scale fashion event marketing with fashion PR is often a method used to launch a fashion brand, reignite interest in a fashion brand, or launch a new fashion boutique of an established fashion brand.
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