Real-Time Fashion #breakingbarriers

During the runway show, out of respect for other members of the audience please make sure your phones and tablets are switched ON. This show will embrace the intrusive nature of social media.

This was the unconventional message which opened the most recent Kenneth Cole runway show at New York Fashion Week. And it’s an important message about the infiltration of social media in the fashion industry: providing real-time information, real-time publicity and real-time consumer engagement.

Photo by Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images for  NYFW
Instead of handbags, the models carried and used their smartphones, and as the show was live-streamed online, Kenneth Cole reached a virtual audience far greater than the few exclusive guests physically present. The show also featured this slogan for the social media savvy:

“We don’t care if you love it, we just want you to ‘Like’ it”

Social media has enabled content to be shared and networked with a power and speed that PR professionals should take advantage of. The nature of including consumers in real time activity lowers the barrier between industry and consumers and results in more brand visibility and recognition.

It’s simple: the fashion industry is reliant on its consumers, so they should be as highly involved and engaged as possible.

Australian fashion retailer ‘Green With Envy’ have real-time communication downpat, with their Instagram boasting a strong and active presence with close to 50,000 followers, effectively promoting and exposing their products and brands.

It’s clear that without a interlinked and regularly updated blend of social media platforms, any brand or retailer will quickly fall far behind the competition.

Quynh Mai, founder of Moving Image & Content and social media expert, has commented that “digital content has become the primary catalyst for all online interactions between brands and increasingly savvy consumers”,  but also notes that it “poses a challenge for brands” as the constant demand for high-quality content forces brands to re-think their communication approach.

This is a valid point and crucial challenge for PR: if your brand is more accessible to consumers in real-time, then so is every other brand. The challenge is to come up with new and exciting strategies like Kenneth Cole to stay in front of the pack.

PR 2.0 Fashion Blogging

In the fast-paced, content-sharing, ever-expanding world of Web 2.0, one of the big challenges for PR practitioners is being able to locate the right audience.

Mass social platforms such as Facebook may be handy to broadcast a message, but  niche online communities of blogs and forums are a more valuable and effective way of reaching a desired audience.

It’s about focusing on people or organisations with influence and authority, and when it comes to influence, look no further than the world of fashion, or more specifically, fashion-blogging. No industry has embraced social media quite like the fashion industry, as PRCouture comments, “the world is consuming fashion in a totally different way”.

One example of successfully utilising fashion-bloggers in a PR campaign was the 2011 launch of Spanish superstore ZARA in Bourke Street, Melbourne. Instead of publishing content on their website or Facebook page in the hope it would reach the right audience, they targeted Melbourne fashion-bloggers with a significant online following, such as Stylezilla, Raww and Fashionising to promote and publicise the store opening. Zara had the bloggers attend the launch, preview styles, and take plenty of photos, and it was ensured that the content would reach the right people.

Channeling a message through bloggers is clever and effective as, not only are they powerful influencers, but as Dierdre Breakenridge states, they provide an audience with “deeper perspective, more insight… their followers highly value the information they share, trust them and feel like they know them”.

So whilst the rise of social media has brought with it an array of possibilities for PR, the two-way style of interaction with audiences should be used wisely: the challenge is to not only communicate messages, but listen carefully to maintain awareness of a public’s influencers.

Fashion-blogger Micah Gianneli at the Zara Melbourne launch.