4. How Do You Create Brand Awareness? | #BoFEducation Video Lecture | How to start your own Fashion Business: Fashion Business Basics - Entrepreneurship

so part four of the business of fashion
basics is on creating brand awareness
and building a communication and
marketing strategy for your brand
essentially there's three elements that
I'd like to talk about today the first
is thinking about a target customer who
is it exactly that you're designing for
why are you designing for them the
second bit is around something I call a
brand story which is what is it that you
would like to be the story that your
brand becomes known for and there's a
lot of different ways of thinking about
a brand story and what we'll talk a
little bit about that and the third is
something called the marketing mix which
is in really kind of traditional
business speak called the four PS price
product place and promotion but let's
start with the target customer who is
your target customer the more you know
about how your target customer lives her
life the more you can get a sense of how
you might meet her wardrobe needs in her
everyday life
what is her life style where does she
live where does she work what is
important to her if you don't know all
of these things how are you going to
design her for example she might be a
busy woman balancing the needs of her
family with her career she gets up early
in the morning to drop her kids off at
school works in a professional setting
all day and then go straight to a
cocktail or dinner in the evening but
because she doesn't have time to change
outfits she needs something appropriate
for all of these occasions understanding
these many aspects of your target
customers life will also help you to
engage with her to create awareness
about your brand this is why knowing
your target audience is one of the most
important elements of building a
successful fashion business
so knowing your customer is important
once you know who your customer is and
you know as we've discussed you're
designing for that customer and you're
creating products for that customer
developing and understanding what your
brand story is is also an important step
fashion is a super competitive industry
talent is readily available so having a
well-designed high quality product it's
simply the price of entry it's what they
call table stakes the next question is
how do you get your story in front of a
consumer and how do you make your brand
resonate with them you know what is a
brand story really about a brand story
is about the story that people will talk
about when they think about your brand
what the press will say what the buyers
will say what a consumer will say on
social media one of the best examples of
a kind of strong brand story is
Alexander Wang he kind of came up you
know and I think everybody kind of uses
the sprays now the off-duty model he
became very very well known for this
kind of aesthetic for the model who's
off duty and you kind of instantly get a
sense of who he's dressing or the
aspiration of the woman he's dressing
you know how she fits it into her life
and how it gets summarized in such a
short sentence that's the power of a
really clear brand story is that people
instantly understand what it is and that
phrase gets tossed around not just
amongst the buyers in press but also
consumers and you can see how that
phrase the off-duty model has kind of
entered our regular everyday fashion
parlance now your brand's story should
really convey who you are what you're
doing what you're providing to your
customers why it's unique why it matters
and then the third important bit in
building brand awareness is this
alignment between the four PS which is
product price place and promotion and
each of these different elements need to
be aligned there
of what we call the marketing mix it's a
set of tools which allows you to craft a
clear marketing direction to tell your
story all of the tools work together
they must be aligned but and they help
to achieve your objectives both online
and offline
so let's spend a little bit of time
talking about each of these elements
product the product is the tangible
physical products or services in most
fashion businesses it's really about
physical product that you're selling it
might be that you're known for Footwear
or you might be going after cocktail
dress market or you might be going for
an active wear market there's all sorts
of different products that are part of
the fashion industry but you need to be
really specific about what it is that
you are selling what product it is
you're selling pricing and this is you
know often a very difficult thing to
come to terms with but as I mentioned
previously many young designers
automatically assume that they need to
operate at the luxury end of the market
there are plenty of other opportunities
to operate at other price points in the
market and you may find that actually by
pricing your product at a more
accessible price point there's a bigger
market opportunity that obviously has
implications for all sorts of other
things like the materials you can use
the places you'll sell as we'll get to
in a moment but thinking about pricing
is a really important decision because
it effectively positions you in the
market and it helps you to understand
who the adjacent brands are that you're
competing with and also the different
materials and the quality of materials
that you can use if you're going to be
priced at a certain point in the market
place so where do you distribute and
sell your products if you're selling a
luxury product there's going to be
certain places where your product will
naturally sit if you're selling a luxury
product there's going to be certain
places where your target customers are
not going to naturally shop what you
want to make sure is that your product
is available where your target customer
shops and at a place which is
is consistent with the positioning of
your product from a price standpoint you
start to see how all of these things
align right the fourth one is promotion
how do you promote your product if
you're trying to reach a specific kind
of customer she's going to read certain
kinds of magazines she's going to have
certain kinds of boutiques that she
interacts with on social media which
will also help to promote your product
all of these four PS the point of this
is to show to suggest and emphasize that
they must be aligned you can't have a
luxury product selling at you know a
high street boutique you know and
promote it in a magazine in another part
of the world or in social media that
doesn't reach your target customer all
of these things must work together the
other thing that's really important to
know about the marketing mix is that as
a designer as a creative director of
your business you're actually overseeing
multiple elements of the marketing mix
sometimes I say to some of my students
if you're selling toothpaste the person
who's developing the toothpaste in the
laboratory figuring out what new
materials or chemicals that can be
developed to make the teeth more white
that kind of scientist person developing
the product is probably not the same
person developing the ads for that
toothpaste those two people are very
different in a fashion brand the person
developing the product or designing a
product ie you is often the same person
developing the ad campaigns and the
communication about the product the
marketing mix touches different parts of
your role as a fashion designer or
creative director you're also going to
have say for example one day on how your
store looks and what that store feels
like and the place where you're going to
sell the product and you're also going
to be making decisions about pricing so
the marketing mix is something as a
fashion designer that you really need to
be on top of it's really about alignment
its alignment between the product the
price you sell it at the place where you
sell it and how
you promote it there are many
promotional techniques that are
available to fashion brands especially
now that we have digital media so you
have kind of traditional marketing
techniques like advertising or PR you
know as a young brand it's unlikely that
you're going to be doing or spending a
lot of money on advertising but you
still might be making powerful imagery
and the reason those images can be
really really powerful now in the
digital age is because those images even
if they're still images or campaign
images or lookbook images they can be
used online and new media marketing or
social media marketing is one of the
most powerful and affordable
opportunities for you as a young
designer to build awareness about your
brand I often get asked the question you
know do I really have to be on social
media do I really have to have a website
do I really have to engage with all of
these new tools and the answer is yes
now do you have to be on every single
social media platform no but should you
have a website should you have a digital
presence absolutely yes when someone
hears about you what's the first thing
they're going to do one of the first
things are going to do is they're going
to look you up on Google and if what
comes back is not a clear representation
of who you are as a brand and something
that's under your control all the other
stuff that's going to come up is stuff
that other people have said about you in
the ideal world when someone searches
you on Google but someone looks you up
on Facebook or Twitter because they want
to follow you or find out more about you
you should have control over those
channels otherwise you're leaving all of
your promotion all of your communication
about your brand to other people and now
of course all those other channels are
going to be important in you magnet
magazines and websites they're also
going to write about you but if you're
absent from that conversation I think
that's a problem
and surprisingly there are still some
very very well-known designers who just
don't have websites and I think this is
a big mistake I think you need to have
some kind of digital presence it doesn't
need to be a really calm
applicated really wizzy really
sophisticated website at the beginning
but something that shows who you are as
a brand that showcases your products
that makes it very clear what it is that
you're offering to the market and
something that enables you to
participate in the conversation about
your brand and about fashion online
which as we all know is a growing market
on the Internet
that's actually really really important
you can think about advertising at some
stage and there are traditional ways of
thinking about advertising it can help
you reach a large audience you can
really control the images that you
create but really at the early stage of
your business it comes with high cost
and there's long long time before you're
probably going to be able to afford it
some magazines if you create really
interesting powerful images as a young
designer they might give you some
placement in the magazines for free but
really as I say you know the real
potential for moving your brand forward
in terms of image in terms of what you
can control is online the other way of
course that you can help define and
build your brand is through PR there's
many many different channels available
to you in PR whether that be long lead
publications like magazines
short lead publications like newspapers
and increasingly online publications
like websites and all of those different
platforms work differently in terms of
the way that you might engage with them
a long lead publication will need as the
name suggests much more time for you to
develop a story with them but shortly
publications like websites will work in
real time and so when you have things to
share when you have new products coming
out when you have announcements to make
when you have awards or prizes that you
win working very well with these
different types of publications is going
to be a key part of building your brand
some of you may want to engage a PR
company or communications company to
work with you but in the early days
you're often the one handling that
yourself so building relationships with
the press especially the ones that have
taken interest in your product and have
a genuine interest in what you're doing
those would be the first place
I would go in the first instance and
don't forget social media you know
there's many different channels
available to you Facebook Twitter
Instagram Google+ YouTube Pinterest
LinkedIn and even you know increasingly
WeChat which is a Chinese social media
platform all of these platforms are
available to you as a young designer you
don't have to do them all in fact I
don't recommend that you do them all you
should only do the ones that you have
enough resource and enough time to
manage properly because once you start a
social media account and start building
up followers they're going to expect and
you should deliver a regular
communication and interaction with them
in those channels so if you want to
start with just one or two social media
channels in the beginning that's
probably the right choice Instagram is a
very very powerful one you know where
the fashion community really engages
which is not yet about anything about
transaction it's really about
communicating about a brand in the first
instance I really recommend Instagram
and probably second it secondly Facebook
Facebook is becoming and continues to be
a really important channel for
interaction with a global community
there's over 1.1 billion active users of
Facebook at the time and it's never too
soon to start building up your social
media following so create content that
sparks an emotional reaction create
content that people will feel you know
what you all know what it's like when
you find something on your feet and it
impacts you in some way or it moves you
in some way or it you create some kind
of emotional reaction that's what gets
people to share and that's probably a
more powerful way or a more efficient
way for you to be thinking about
building your social media following at
the early stages before you really have
budgets to allocate so that kind of
summarizes or concludes building brand
awareness you know brand awareness as I
said is really about being aware of your
target customer you know understanding
and clarifying what your brand story is
and ensuring alignment across the four
the marketing mix which our product
price place and promotion and within
promotion there's many different
opportunities and platforms that you can
think about for promoting your brand
some of which are free because of what's
happening in social media so don't
ignore those free platforms in the
beginning because they will probably be
your best friend
you