For the past few years the Intercontex team has been paying close attention to and has been part of launching several apparel brands exclusively online. While retail is (still) a mess and the economic environment is changing and adapting for the future, the online/digital shopping revolution is continuing to grow. Our advice for new brands is simple: TAKE IT DIGITAL.
There are several companies operating solely online these days and pretty much all are using blogs and social media to their advantage (after all it’s an affordable and, when done right, an effective form of marketing). The goal behind social media is not necessarily to SPAM the crap out of your friends, followers or customers in order to increase sales. Social Media and blogs provide an opportunity for companies to tell a story about their brands that is often lost when their product gets to traditional retail. These tools can help anyone build a brand’s connection with its customers. It is easier than ever now to create (or destroy) a brand’s personality. From a technical perspective, it also assists with a brand’s overall web presence and search engine optimization.
When it comes to lifestyle brands (emerging brands as well as established one), social media and blogging is a MUST. One of our past clients, Bumpy Pitch (@bumpypitch), is one of the best examples of this. Check out their blog site The Original Winger as well as their brand site BumpyPitch.com. The key to their success is that they have primarily focused on building a community and a following throughout the soccer community first… their explosive t-shirt sales are a result of the niche lifestyle they have concentrated on developing. Bonobos.com is another online exclusive/blogging brand that sells unique pants/trousers for men and has had phenomenal success with a specific target market online. Of course, one of the most revolutionary companies to date in this arena is Threadless.com who incorporates social networking, blogging, design community, and online marketing in their business model to give its customers a unique experience.
We encourage all brands to focus efforts on creating a niche community of fans online first and foremost. People buy apparel because they WANT to, not because they need to… in the end we are actually not in the apparel industry, but in the lifestyle/identity business.
AM
Social Media Rewrites the Rules for Brands
Posted WEDNESDAY JUNE 24, 2009
From WWD ISSUE 06/24/2009
Donna Karan’s Twitter page bills itself as providing “behind-the-scenes scoop from inside DKNY.” Photo By Courtesy Photo
Gucci is doing it. So are Oscar de la Renta, Donna Karan, Target, Urban Outfitters, Louis Vuitton and Rachel Roy.
Fashion houses, designers and retailers are rushing into the free social media phenomenon that is reshaping not only interpersonal communication, but how apparel, accessories and beauty products are marketed and sold.
They are tweeting, blogging and updating their profiles in an effort to mold their brand personalities on real-time global platforms and form relationships with a community of customers, particularly consumers for whom the Web is as important as a limb.
“Customers can feel like they are part of the brand’s extended family, and therefore the brand itself, while the interactive element further deepens that relationship,” said Alex Bolen, chief executive officer of Oscar de la Renta. “These characteristics address and satisfy that ‘tribal’ part of the fashion consumer — the way in which people identify themselves by the brands they buy.”
A key component of social media “is real-time feedback — an ability to accurately measure marketing results,” Bolen said. “While this aspect of the Internet’s promise has yet to be fully realized, one can adjust, fairly quickly, to emphasize those initiatives that are working best.”
The newness of the platforms has made quantifying the sales impact of social media tough to pinpoint, although companies cite rising Web traffic and more customers using promotions.
“How do you quantify something that prevents a customer service problem that could’ve been a disaster,…[that] can create new buzz for a new product?” asked Paul Argenti, a professor of corporate communications at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. “How do you quantify that? Where else can you get that kind of instant feedback? It’s all unquantifiable and all incredibly useful.”
Reggie Bradford, ceo of Vitrue, a social media consulting firm, believes it’s important to view the situation in reverse, saying a brand will ultimately be “measured in growth or losses by being there [on social media] or not being there.”
More than any marketing medium, including print, where advertising is suffering, social media give brands a chance to be a part of a dialogue about their own companies. In this new and evolving framework, everyone is a participant. According to Forrester Research, Facebook, with an estimated 200 million users, classifies two-thirds of its users as being of post-college age, with 35-plus the fastest-growing demographic. Twitter, a platform for messages of 140 characters or less that had 20 million unique visitors in May, has 42 percent of its users in the 35-to-49 age range and 20 percent ages 25 to 34.
You don’t have to be famous to get a following, but it helps. The king of the Twitter hill is Ashton Kutcher, who got into the game early and has more than 2.3 million followers. Oprah Winfrey, whose first tweet didn’t come until April — “HI TWITTERS. THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY” — now has over 1.6 million followers.
The fascination with fashion has even helped breed followings for Twitterers masquerading as major industry figures, including fakekarl (Lagerfeld) and fakeanna (Wintour). WWD’s own Twitter page has grown to more than 688,000 followers from a mere 200 since its launch in February.
Designers such as Rachel Roy and Charlotte Ronson share snapshots of their personal lives and their company’s activities via social media.
Brands including Gap, Victoria’s Secret, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Nike and Adidas also have tapped into YouTube, MySpace and other sites, where their videos, commercials, behind-the-scenes footage and fashion shows are posted.
“Everyone wants to know what makes [designers] tick, why they design, and get closer to the brand,” said Frances Pennington, vice president of global marketing for Juicy Couture.Ronson said she updates her Twitter fans at least daily “letting them know if something new comes in or something sells well. It’s a good way to keep everyone connected.”
The designer maintains a Twitter page for her business — Twitter.com/shopronson — with 2,084 followers since starting in the last three months. It includes examples of the Twitter-as-marketing technique, such as a recent tweet that said, “Just got in some great Rag & Bone items…hats, ties and belts…come check it out!!!”
Ronson’s attention to her Twitter page has yielded results in her retail site’s traffic. About 10 percent of Ronson’s total site traffic originates on Twitter, and 93 percent are new visitors. Ronson also posts daily updates on her personal Twitter page, Twitter.com/cjronson, which has 11,946 followers, with musings about her day, such as, “I’m watching ‘Funny Face,’ the musical with Audrey Hepburn and Fred Astaire…Need I say more…”
Roy tweets several times daily on Twitter.com/rachel_roy and has attracted 1,672 followers who frequently retweet — the Twitter term for forwarding a message — her posts. The designer mixes promotional tweets, such as, “The entire RR 2010 Resort Collection Lookbook has been posted on Rachel Roy’s official Facebook Page. Check it out,” with more personal tweets — “I found some cute wellies by Hunter for my daughter and I — green for me and purple for her. Here’s a link to more.”
The juxtaposition is engineered to nurture ties with customers. “I hope that my relationship with customers will become more intimate as they get to know me beyond my designs,” she said.
Facebook relaunched its company page platform in March with more options for organizations to elevate “the power of the brand,” said Tom Arrix, the site’s vice president of U.S. sales. The result is a company page that looks identical to a user’s page, with a “Wall” where the company and its fans can post messages, photos and video; a tab for information about the company, and additional tabs where a firm can add everything from sale promotions to trailers for new ad campaigns.
Facebook offers its users the ability to “fan” a firm or brand — a component that sets it apart from a standard company Web site. Once a user has “fanned” a brand, the business has direct access to them and is able to send messages and updates via a constant news feed on the user’s home page.
The result is a “powerful brand advantage….The company is now in the middle of two-way communication with their consumer,” Arrix said.
To join Twitter, a user creates a free user name and password and then sifts through a search function to find friends and companies the user would like to “follow.” Once a user is following a company, the user’s home page is refreshed with every update that company sends. For instance, if LouisVuitton_US tweets “Louis Vuitton’s new Core Values campaign profiled in today’s @nytimes,” all 10,492 of its followers will see this message on their home pages.
Some naysayers may find it hard to understand why a person would invite a company into their virtual personal life by fanning a company on Facebook or following them on Twitter, but millions have done just that.
It remains difficult to decipher what an online following means for companies in the long term. The more established Facebook and MySpace now have retention rates of almost 70 percent, according to Nielsen Media. However, Nielsen Media estimated more than 60 percent of first-time Twitter users neglected to return to the site after a month.
Vitrue created a Social Media Index to measure what people are talking about online. The index is generated from an algorithm that scours the Internet for a specific term on searches and social media networks and produces a score. The higher the score, the more frequently that term has been mentioned on the Web. Vitrue looked at 35 major fashion brands and retailers from May 26 to June 1. The five most-talked-about brands were Gucci, Target, Gap, American Apparel and Urban Outfitters.
These brands are, not coincidentally, active on social platforms. They “leverage their presence on social networks, have great content [updated frequently] and tools for engagement and conversation,” Bradford said.
“Fashion brands are emblematic of a person’s personality and how they want to be perceived; it’s woven into [her] identity,” he said. “Everybody loves brands — whether they’re generic or Gucci. It’s a statement.”
Here, a directory of some of the leading fashion industry Tweeters:
Adidas: www.twitter.com/adidasrunning
American Apparel: www.twitter.com/americanapparel
Baby Phat: www.twitter.com/BabyPhat
Banana Republic: www.twitter.com/BROfficial
BCBG Max Azria: www.twitter.com/BCBGMAXAZRIA
Betsey Johnson: www.twitter.com/xoBetseyJohnson
Brian Reyes: www.twitter.com/BrianReyes
Calvin Klein: www.twitter.com/calvinklein
Charlotte Ronson: www.twitter.com/cjronson and www.twitter.com/shopronson
Dior: www.twitter.com/Lady_Dior
Diane Von Furstenberg: www.twitter.com/InsideDVF
Donna Karan: www.twitter.com/dkny
French Connection: www.twitter.com/frenchconn39
The GAP: www.twitter.com/GapOfficial
Gucci: www.twitter.com/GuccibyGucci
H&M USA: www.twitter.com/hmusa
Hayden Harnet: www.twitter.com/hayden_harnett
Henry Holland: www.twitter.com/henryholland
Isaac Mizrahi: www.twitter.com/isaacmizrahi
J. Mendel: www.twitter.com/jmendelfashions
Kate Spade: www.twitter.com/katespadeny
Lacoste: www.twitter.com/LACOSTE
Liz Claiborne: www.twitter.com/LizClaiborneNY
Loehmanns: www.twitter.com/Loehmanns
Louis Vuitton: www.twitter.com/LouisVuitton_US
Marc Ecko: www.twitter.com/beingmarcecko
Nike: www.twitter.com/nikebasketball
Nordstrom: www.twitter.com/nordstrom
Oscar de la Renta: www.twitter.com/OscarPRgirl
Rachel Roy: www.twitter.com/rachel_roy
Rebecca Minkoff: www.twitter.com/RebeccaMinkoff
Saks: www.twitter.com/SaksSF
Stella McCartney: www.twitter.com/stellamccartney
T.J. Maxx: www.twitter.com/tjmaxx
Tory Burch: www.twitter.com/toryburch
Urban Outfitters: www.twitter.com/urbanoutfitters
Vivienne Tam: www.twitter.com/VivienneTam
William Rast: www.twitter.com/williamrastAll About Twitter
by Elizabeth Siegel
From WWD Beauty Biz Issue 06/19/2009
If you can type, chances are you’re on Twitter. The Internet phenomenon, which allows for conversation via 140 character–long Tweets (Twitter-talk for posts), has attracted huge numbers of consumers, celebrities and companies alike. Beauty marketers have taken to tweeting with gusto. Always cutting edge, MAC Cosmetics began using Twitter in September, before the medium was mainstream. Capitalizing on its position as an artistry brand, senior artists chronicled their experiences backstage at New York Fashion Week and have continued to do so in subsequent seasons.
Tweets range from the mundane—chugging cappuccino—to the informative—noting that lip gloss was used on eyes at fall 2009 shows. Between mid-February and mid-March, more than 2 million users in 12 countries viewed an aggregate feed of the MAC artists’ Tweets on Facebook. “We’re not measuring success on Twitter by its effect on our sales—I’m not even sure that’s possible,” says Laura Elkins, vice president of consumer marketing. “If we look at engaging fans as a top priority, Twitter can be phenomenally successful, and it has a global reach.” Engaging consumers on Twitter, which is a free service, is also being used as an effective advertising tool in a time when ad budgets are stretched thin.
More than 2,700 users follow Benefit’s Twitter page, which is updated at least once a day. In June, the brand will promote its new trio of Crescent Row fragrances on the site. “We’re creating three unique Twitter profi les, one for each of the fragrances,” explains co-founder Jean Ford. Consumers are also Tweeting, and a two-way dialogue on Twitter can be used as an inexpensive marketing tool. “People divulge information about themselves on Twitter in ways that they might not through other media,” says ceo and founder of Deep Focus consulting agency Ian Schafer. “Brands can use that to their advantage.” For example, Kiehl’s Since 1851’s president, Chris Salgardo, uses conversations about products and ingredients on the brand’s three-month-old Twitter page as tools for speedy market research. “As opposed to doing market surveys that take months to track results, with Twitter, there is a sense of immediacy,” he says.
Given the number of in-store events and sales that retailers are hosting as of late, Twitter has also proven to be an effective means of alerting shoppers to promotions. Sephora keeps its large following, which numbers more than 9,000, current on events, and also offers beauty tips with daily updates. Los Angeles eco boutique Vert’s Twitter page has a smaller following of about 200, but has proven equally as important to touting promotions. “When we make a Tweet we always get feedback, like when we made our most recent post about a Josie Maran event,” says owner Renata Helfman. “What could be more exciting than knowing your customers are looking forward to the next time they visit your shop?”
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Nice!