Tips & Strategy | PR Couture: Fashion PR, Marketing & Social Media

Fashion PR: How to Think Like an Editor and Succeed with Branded Content

April 6, 2012 1 Comment written by Crosby

This is the first of a three-part series I am writing for Fast Company. Enjoy!

The executive editor of a popular online news site recently uploaded a photo of a poster to Instagram that read, “I’ll be interested, if you’ll be interesting.” The photo caption explained that this sentiment echoes her “operating policy.” There you have it–a simple, yet impactful peek into the mind of an editor-in-chief.

Nowadays anyone can publish, but not everyone is interesting. As the proverbial cloud gets cloudier, companies are challenged to emerge above the turbulent noise of online chatter to the sunny calm where brands, media, influencers, and consumers work together to create meaning, value, and connection. These days, developing a successful online presence requires approaching traditional digital efforts like link-building, web traffic, lead generation, and sales from a decidedly more editorial, content-rich approach: a hybrid marketing and storytelling strategy that drives customer actions by creating, documenting, distributing, and optimizing content. Some companies have created their own internal content development departments or are working with agencies to create everything from infographics to documentaries that highlight where the values, interests, and personality of brand and customer overlap. Coca Cola believes so strongly in the power of content that they are relying on this approach to help them double the size of their business by 2020.

While your office probably looks a lot different than a newsroom, approaching content strategy by thinking like a magazine publisher or a television producer is an effective way to approach content development and promotion. Utilizing influential voices to develop and promote content can help ensure that you meet the first requirement of securing readership and viewers–be interesting.

This is absolutely where a journey into the content sphere begins. No matter what you do, do this first:

Designate a leader: Content naturally comes from multiple departments and can work in service of a multitude of business goals, but you need a content captain, a creative champion within the organization to provide overarching strategy, work with internal and external teams, and, if needed, be the brand voice when it comes to social media conversation. This leader and his/her support staff will help to train your organization to capture content, and to help them promote and place the latest great story. As the only acting conduit and connector between your brand and the masses, it’s critical that he/she is a skilled editor, a trusted communicator who loves language and who appreciates the fun of a well-placed pun (a little rhyming doesn’t hurt either).

While the thought of adding on tactics like video or even Pinterest may seem like daunting tasks, and difficult to prioritize, the good news is that there is already a powerful ecosystem of influencers connected to your brand that can help support your efforts.

Read the rest of the article, “Channeling Anna Wintour: When Creating Branded Content, Think Like An Editor-In-Chief ,” on Fast Company.

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Filed Under: Favorites, PR Couture, Tips & Strategy Tagged With: Fashion PR, Press Coverage

Fashion PR 101: How to Write a Fashion PR Plan

April 3, 2012 7 Comments written by Crosby

This is an updated version of a popular 2010 article. Enjoy! PS - for a free Fashion PR plan template, sign up for monthly PR Couture emails!

Planning Makes Perfect

While we may all be tempted to attempt the old business adage of throwing spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks, success in public relations requires an extensive discovery and planning phase in order to be both successful and measureable. After all, how can you truly measure your success if you haven’t clearly communicated and agreed with your client (or business partners) on the goals and strategy behind your efforts? A well-crafted public relations plan establishes goals, measureable objectives, strategies and supporting tactics to keep everyone on track. While each fashion PR publicist/agency tends to haver her own unique way to putting a PR plan together, the components are similar. The following series of steps provide an easy-to-use outline to customize your own fashion PR plan.

Research/Discovery

Where does your brand fit in the marketplace? Who is your target customer and what does she care about? What are your competitors doing? What publications, blogs and events are a fit with your brand? First up, research. There are two avenues to getting the answers you seek, primary and secondary research. Secondary research consists of collecting data that has already been published. You might find statistics relevant to consumer purchasing behavior or emerging trends in a publication like AdAge or Women’s Wear Daily. Primary research means going out and doing research on your own – a quick survey of previous customers (social media is great for this), friends and family can all be used to help you better your brand positioning. Then, writing up your findings in a brief Executive Summary to kick off your plan.

Target Customer

Don’t make the mistake of choosing a target public that is too broad. One of the biggest mistakes brands make is in their attempt ot be all things to all people. While your client may be convinced that“all women” should fall in love with her handbag line, not establishing a clear target customer actually does a disservice to your brand. In fact, the more niche you can be the better. Perhaps you learn from your research that many of your customers are young moms who love the fashion-forward look of the bags, but actually use them as diaper bags because of the roomy vinyl exterior. This discovery could drive an entire strategy focused on telling the diaper bag story. As you get clear about your target customer, begin to paint a picture of her in your plan. Beyond age, income and location, think about developing a persona to guide your positioning. What is her favorite movie? What kind of a car does she drive? What is her favorite flavor of tea? Is she married? Does she travel often or stay close to home? How does she discover new products? Does she use Pinterest? Twitter? Does she check email on her cell phone, laptop, iPad?
By identifying your target customer and learning as much as you can about her, you can then begin to develop strategies to engage her around what she cares about, using the various media and platforms where she is already spending her time.

Key Messages/Positioning

At the end of every media opportunity, what are the key things you want an editor to know about this brand? At your next trunk show, what imformation is most important to share with potential customers. It could be that your bags are made of recycled plastic, or that the convertible strap means the bag can be worn multiple ways. Perhaps the handbag creator used to be a painter in Morocco and that is where this season’s color palette comes from. Whatever it is, get clear about what you want to communicate during your outreach. This can also funciton as a handy cheat sheet of sorts when media training your client to stay on message during interviews. For more tips on media training, check out Give Great Interview with these 10 Haute Media Training Tips.

Objectives

While goals are general, objectives are specific. Identify the major objectives that you want to accomplish with your PR plan. Make these measurable so they are easy to evaluate at the end of the campaign. For example, if one of your goals is to become an internationally known handbag designer, Objective 1 may be to secure 5 stories in international print media publications within the next 6 months. Objective 2 might be to work with bloggers in the UK or France on a content campaign for Tumblr.

Strategies & Tactics

Once you have clear objectives in place, you need to consider what creative strategies you will employ to ensure you successfully meet your objectives. Remember that each strategy should deliver a cohesive message that ties into your objective. For more information on how to write goals, objectives, strategies and tactics (it can get a little confusing,) check out How to Write Fashion PR Goals, Objectives, Strategies & Tactics).

Evaluation

Almost done! The final part of the plan is figuring out how to evaluate the success of the program. This may include media impressions, Facebook page growth or engagement, referral traffic to a website, or even a pre and post survey to determine how levels of awareness or brand affinity have changed as a result of your campaign. One thing that always helps is to remember to benchmark your current numbers before you begin your program.

Relationship Tending

Relationships with media, customers and vendors shouldn’t end just because your campaign does. Smart fashion PR practitioners and designers know that PR is a cumulative process. Continue cultivating any new and existing relationships with editors, vendors, publics with regular follow up. Strong relationships establish credibility and will make your job easier the next time around. Keeping in touch has never been so easy in today’s world of technology. A quick email, tweet or mention on a Facebook page can go a long way so stay in touch even during downtime.

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Filed Under: Featured, PR Couture, Tips & Strategy Tagged With: Fashion PR

Fashion PR Trends: How Tibi Manages Social Media and Works with Bloggers

February 29, 2012 2 Comments written by PR Couture

By Crissie Fuller for IFB

We chatted with Liz Walker the Directer of Public Relations at Tibi. We love Tibi – for many reasons - but most of all because of how they have embraced the blogging community.

At what point in your marketing strategy do you incorporate Social Media – is it considered from the beginning, or do you find ways to fit it in later?

For the past two to three years, social media has been a huge focus for us. While we still use more traditional PR and Marketing techniques to get our news out, we like that the organic and rapid way of spreading our news through social media outlets helps us directly connect with the consumer. A great example – we’ll announce a contest or giveaway through Twitter or Facebook exclusively and we can create excitement and exclusivity by offering a chance to win to existing or new fans and followers only. More news related marketing, for example a recent collaboration we did for Spring 12 with Elin Kling and Julia Sarr-Jamois, is still often communicated through industry press outreach, and followed by social media, but even that is not always the case.

How big is your Social Media team?

Our PR/Marketing team is three, plus a graphic designer who helps us to create visual content. We all brainstorm ideas for social media as a whole, and then handle posting on various outlets individually. This is a big initiative and definitely a group effort.

In what capacity do you work with bloggers?

Amy’s an avid follower of 15 blogs or so but is always scouting around for the newcomers and I’d say in influenced a great deal by these guys. In the past year, we’ve worked with some great girls – Leandra Medine of The ManRepeller, live-styled our Spring 2011 collection in the windows of Bloomingdales in May. Elin Kling, Swedish blogger from Style by Kling, styled our Spring 2012 runway show and ad campaign starring Wonderland editor Julia Sarr-Jamois. Most recently, we sponsored the 2012 bloglovin’ Awards during Fashion Week. At our most recent show, we focused on this group over our celebrities because it’s so relevant – we had Hanneli, Glamourai, Olivia Palermo, Elin Kling, Song of Style, Tuula Vintage, Purseblog and more in our front row.

What value do you see in having bloggers at shows? Are they there for coverage, or more to build relationships?

Of course from a PR perspective we love the coverage, but one of the best things about blogger attendance is the very different interpretations you get about the collection and the immediate feedback. Editors and buyers look at the pieces from Fall 12 with a September shoot or clothing delivery in mind-that’s over six months away! The bloggers post, tweet or tumble pics instantly in a lot of cases, and the various viewpoints could each represent the feeling of one of our customers. The show itself is so hectic, that we work on developing relationships in the months leading up to fashion week-inviting bloggers in to pull pieces to wear, or seeing them at events.

How do you measure the overall value of bloggers and Social Media?

We use traditional web analytics to measure the traffic blogs and social media drives to our website and e-commerce. Outside of that, a less-measurable (but just as important) goal is awareness. Bloggers, depending on physical locale and focus, open our brand up to new customers with each post.

What changes have you noticed in fashion marketing/PR over the past few years? What trends would you predict for the future?

Of course social media is a huge change, I also think that the customer is expecting more and more-product info, brand news, peeks behind the scenes-and they want it all now. That immediacy is driven by the web, Twitter especially is a constant news feed. It’s a fun challenge to keep our fans and followers engaged. A few years ago we would plan for a feature to run in, let’s say, the July issue of a major magazine, now we want the feature on that magazine’s website tomorrow, or even announced on our own Twitter today.

Read the full article on Independent Fashion Bloggers.

Filed Under: Fashion Brands, PR Interviews, Social Media, Tips & Strategy Tagged With: Fashion Blogger Relations