Friday, October 25, 2019

From “You Can’t Sit with Us” to “Come Join Us”: Influencers Community

Aspiring Fashion Brands like Realisation Par, Reformation, With Jéan, are thriving through social media like Instagram. Many brands are creating communities of bloggers who have similar tastes and styles online and offline.

These communities are first started by generating hashtags like “#lesfillesenrouge” (the girls in Rouge), “#dreamgirls” (girls who wear Realisation Par), etc. By encouraging customers to use these hashtags, brands are creating a sense of “insider” and “family”. These brands can also find KOLs who post pics with their products and thereby post UGC (User-generated content). This helps the brand form its unique identity.

Take a look at the Instagram page of the French brand Rouje, which is created by blogger Jeanne Damas. Most of its content is UGC and KOLs in Rouje. It rarely showcases famous models or displays professional photoshoots. It does branding through more daily snapshots like a Parisian girl sitting by a café wearing a Rouge dress - blinking to young women - to live a “Parisian lifestyle” by buying their products.

The Californian brand Revolve uses similar strategies. Revolve is an online fashion retailer created by two data science guys targeting young women. According to “The Fashion Law,” 70% of current overall sales at Revolve are driven by influencer marketing.

By collaborating with influencers with a similar vibe as Revolve, it successfully turns traffic into cash. Instead of posing random OOTD pictures, Revolve gathers buyers and influencers into a “friend cycle.” For example, they traveled together with their loved ones to Phuket Island on Valentine's day. This campaign has less a feeling of a campaign, but more like a sorority outing. Every year they have this type of “group outing campaign,” and the effect is better than commercial advertisements. Similarly, Rouge also posts bloggers having dinner together, dancing and partying on its Instagram story.

Forming of bloggers communities definitely need careful management of the relationships with KOLs. This long-term collaboration is nevertheless effective for marketing and branding and costs much less.

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