The fashion industry is a vastly competitive space that continues to grow and transform. Fashion brands rely on a unique set of skills that vary from fashion design, marketing, merchandising and more to stay ahead of the game. One skill fashion marketers are turning to more frequently is brand storytelling. But what is brand storytelling and what are the best practices when it comes to the world of fashion? Keep reading this comprehensive guide to find out more.
What is Fashion Brand Storytelling?
Brand storytelling is part of your overall brand strategy. Fashion brand storytelling is when fashion brands connect with their consumers through the story of their brand. Fashion storytelling uses carefully crafted social media campaigns, advertising and outreach to help audiences understand and connect with a brand and what they stand for, create and produce.
Why is Brand Storytelling Important?
Brands use storytelling in their designs and marketing to connect consumers with their products and collections. Fashion brand storytelling is important because it helps brands create an emotional connection — and strengthen trust with — their consumers. An authentic and exciting brand story is vital to connecting with the consumer. Great brand storytelling creates a memorable buzz around your brand and sparks all the right emotions in the consumer. so you want to make sure you get it right. Here are 4 best practices to keep in mind.
1. Use Your Audience
When it comes to your brand story and how you communicate it, your audience should determine pretty much everything. Who is your audience? What do they read? How do they interact with competitor brand stories? Why do existing customers buy from you? Why should new customers buy from you? What are your customers' online habits? Which influencers do they interact with? You should study your audience and know exactly how they interact with you as a brand, then craft your storytelling practices around this.
2. Tell Your Origin Story
Telling your brand origin story is an integral part of fashion storytelling. Brands that are willing to tell their story authentically, with honesty and transparency about what they represent, will forge more meaningful connections with their audience. The consumer wants to be immersed in your story, they want to see themselves in the brand and really connect with brands that represent them. That’s why your origin story is so important. It is the essence of your brand, and you will need to communicate this essence throughout your brand storytelling.
3. Create Authentic Content
Use your resources to your advantage! Create content that delves into your origins, brand values and designs for your carefully crafted site blog and target your specific audience and industry trends in creative branded social media content. This will position your brand with your authentic brand story, and allow you to really build that connection with your audience.
4. Utilise Influencers and Celebrities
If you’ve done your research properly, you should know which influencers, celebrities and media outlets your audience interacts with online. Utilise this! You can then target your audience via collaboration with the right influencers and advertising in the right media outlets! Use your knowledge of your audience to navigate where your efforts should go to really connect with the consumers daily habits and trends.
Though your own authentic content is super important to your brand story, so is your outreach. People trust secondary sources, recommendations and testimonials much more than a brand's own advertising, so make sure you are telling your authentic story on this front too!
What Makes Great Fashion Brand Storytelling?
Gucci is a great example of brand storytelling, targeting the millennial generation specifically in their recent brand redesign. This luxury brand has seamlessly tapped into the real wants, desires and interests of these young consumers, resulting in the brand later reporting that 50% of its sales were now attributed to millennials.
To do this, Gucci employed experimental marketing methods created specifically to target their millennial audience. Ahead of the launch of their watch collection, ‘Le Marché des Merveilles’, Gucci collaborated with prominent visual artists to develop images and ‘memes’ centered around the new timepieces. These fashion-inspired memes were then shared amongst popular Instagram creators and curators, along with the hashtag #TFWGucci (That Feeling When Gucci).
Though this was an unexpected redesign of their marketing strategy, the campaign worked. It was entertaining and injected just the right amount of humour into the brand. Gucci targeted their millennial audience, noticed the relevance of memes to their self-expression and used that to its best ability. Any great brand will research and utilise opportunities like this for creative brand marketing.
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At James Hillman we don't just look at fashion designs and textures, we dig deep to extract the essence of your brand's DNA and really get to know you. We take a look at current social and cultural trends to craft the ideal brand storytelling practices for you, then help you implement them and bring your brand story to life.
Brand storytelling (and wider fashion brand strategy) can be difficult to navigate if you’re just launching a brand, so why not trust an industry expert with a whole range of tried and tested branding techniques that will be sure to help position your brand carefully in the eye of the consumer? Contact James Hillman Today to find out more.
