Conscious Social Marketing: Madras 641 Clothing - @M641

In my daily roll as Community Director (aka Herder of Cats), I delve into and become engrossed in many conversations on a wide variety of subjects. I’d say I get inspired quite a few conversations that I am very lucky to be a part of. My most recent inspiration came from the Business of Fashion’s post on “Fashion 2.0: Why is Fashion So Anti-Social?”

As a whole, the fashion industry has been slow to embrace these tools — certainly a lot slower than their customers. YM Ousley states:

Reputation, controlled communication and messaging are all cornerstones of fashion promotion and PR. While fashion has historically been a reluctant participant in new media, it offers the tools to develop all three. It’s time for fashion to get on the social media train.

My Response:

I believe one of the major reasons the fashion industry is “late to the party” is because traditionally fashion industry players have resisted the openness that social media brings with it. Designers, brands and retail stores have pretty much kept their cards close to their chests – partly due to habit, and partly due to high risks of cheap knock-offs. Secondly, fashion brands are used to having control, they still don’t believe or don’t quite grasp, that by giving up control, they are gaining more. It’s not just true of fashion brands, but any large brand that’s used to one way, television style message broadcasts about their brands.

Social media, and any user-generated or discussion environment, is not a one-way conversation; it’s a many-to-many conversation. People are going to talk about your brand regardless of whether you are on Twitter (or whatever medium they are using), so you might as well join the conversation. Your brand needs to be listening and monitoring; listening and monitoring are new forms of customer service. If there are quality issues, your customers will let you (and 1,000 of their closest friends) know, so you better be there to acknowledge, and either remedy or debunk (if information is false). Please, please, please, listen before you speak: social platforms aren’t simply a one-way broadcast system, they are conversation facilitators that emphasize long-term relationship building. And if you need hep with any of this, hire a community manager, moderator or “listener” (at least a part-time one) to help you deal with the chatter, understand trends, manage your own community and participate wherever conversations are happening.

Macala’s Reponse:

I understand that brands feel social media is risky because of transparency and openness it requires. I agree with YM; it’s important to select the social sites where you participate, but risk is limited. People are going to talk, so wouldn’t you rather address negative reviews and opinions; answering in and helping find a solution to the problems? Most often, addressing the complaint trumps the original incident because community/social member are so impressed by the brands listening, they are satisfied that their concern was herd and addressed.  Monitoring also prevents larger flair ups or negative reviews in the future because customers know the brand is listening.

So having and actively engaging in five to ten targeted spots broadens your customer base and draws in new customers to the brand. People trust people, that’s the basis of social media. So if a friend recommends a brand to another friend, that person’s likelihood of becoming a customer is three time greater than if they found a brand’s retail site on their own with no information.

YM makes another point that I believe is critical not to overlook:

Particularly for emerging designers and independent brands, building brand awareness can be a long journey, often requiring frequent self-promotion to editors, journalists and industry representatives. If the end goal of all of this is to reach an interested audience, why aren’t these upstarts building and communicating with that audience directly? While the time and cost of securing editorials, press mentions and awards is high, the time and cost of establishing a reputation online is significantly lower, and while social media can’t replace a thoughtful offline PR strategy, the two approaches are complementary and mutually reinforcing.

There are actually large number of emerging (@Emily_Kerse), small (@M641) and medium sized (@ShopCosabella) brands and designers leveraging the power of social media to better establish their brands (Social Media Rewrites Fashion History). In fact, they are dominating the social space because of quick adoption of social technologies into their marketing efforts. Fashion bloggers and magazines are now moving faster and breaking trends before their traditional print counterparts. So it’s not a question of when, it a question of how. Social marketing is not a drive by shooting and should be a part of a holistic marketing plan that hybrids traditional and new media tactics. In current retail times, revenue is important. Social media marketing is a tool that should be strategically integrated into a brand’s overall marketing plan to drive continued brand awareness, build relationships with customers and drive sales revenue.

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