Last week, fashion houses such as Barbour, Burberry and Savile Row unveiled the latest trends in menswear to a huge audience, both in person and online, at London Collections: Men (LCM). The event highlighted the buzz around men’s fashion at the moment, bringing in thousands of tweets, media attention and a celebrity ‘frow’.
With figures from Mintel revealing that menswear now contributes £12.9billion to the UK economy, this demographic presents a huge opportunity to fashion retailers if they can translate these catwalk trends to shop hangers.
However, while fashion designers are focusing on how they can add their own style to the fabric, cut and colour du jour, retail marketers can learn a lot from how brands harnessed digital over the four days. With 65% of men shopping for fashion online, brands that manage this successfully will reap the rewards:
Pop ups are here to stay
It may be contradictory to say that a pop up will be a permanent fixture in the fashion industry, but LCM highlighted just that: pop ups are here to stay in 2015.
During the four days of LCM, pop-ups appeared across London, encouraging the public to purchase from this year’s slickest brands. ‘Number 9’ was one such pop-up, which distinguished itself from the others by also showcasing new retail technology, such as smart mannequins. This technology provided in-depth product information on the clothes it was modelling.
Much more than a novelty, pop-up stores also offer a way of bridging the gap between online and offline retail. For online-only brands, offering a physical location pop-up stores can drive brand awareness and customer engagement as consumers can see and touch items. In addition, as pop ups are usually put in place for a limited amount of time retailers can make the experience feel exclusive; shoppers have to buy quickly.
By providing a place for consumers to browse products, retailers can gather valuable data on their customers. What are they trying on, what products are they getting more information on in-store using retail technology, what are they buying in-store versus online? By having this data, retail marketers can then make smarter targeting decisions online, ensuring they deliver the right message, to the right demographic, at the right time.
Social drives sales
Rakuten Marketing social insights showed that 97,688 tweets were sent using the official hashtags of #LCM and #LCM2015. Some brands exhibiting drove social strategy particularly well. Burberry, for example, consistently delivers innovative and interactive social experiences. For LCM this year, the company had a strong presence across all social media channels, driving their own hashtag on Twitter and using interactive, rich media content across other platforms. The brand created a Vine of their ‘classically bohemian runway’, which was shared by many users for example.
Burberry’s success highlights the opportunity for brands to engage with consumers on a variety of social channels. From our own research at Rakuten Marketing, we know that men like to investigate their purchases. As a result, brands should consider how their social pages can provide that information, so they can target men while they are ‘grazing’ social media feeds, turning their content strategy from a one man conversation into a two way interaction. Promoted tweets with strong creative on Twitter are available for all brands and can help to ensure targeted advertising is building an engaging presence on the platform.
However, brands should remember that social media is designed for conversation. Consumers do not want to be targeted with irrelevant content which feels forced. Instead, brands should ensure they are delivering an engaging experience, which plays into consumers’ preferences and needs.
Video content is king
While the ‘frow’ was typically populated with the likes of David Gandy, and other models-turned the ‘it’ crowd, this year, a new group of fashion-conscious males were invited to view the show from the front row: the consumer. Through live-streaming on microsites, anyone was able to watch shows on the catwalk from big brands such as Topshop, or up-and-coming designers from the London College of Fashion.
This mirrors the desire for video we are already seeing in online retail, as consumers look for visually stimulating and audible content which appeals to the senses. Although online retail removes the ability to ‘try on’ clothes, video enables the consumer to see what clothes look like in ‘real life’ as opposed to on a mannequin.
By highlighting how an item looks, sits and moves when worn, brands can build trust amongst consumers, who feel they can purchase with more confidence as they won’t be surprised by the way an item looks when it arrives. As such, retail marketers should look at how they can use video in their marketing efforts, blurring the lines between ecommerce and media. A video display ad is one thing, but marketers can take this one step further by adding an interactive element to the video, inspiring consumers to make a purchase by making the content shoppable.
Consumers appreciate the seamless experience a brand provides online from discovery to purchase, and as a result brands benefit from a more engaged customer-base, likely to return again for the smooth experience they desire.
By Mark Haviland, MD of Rakuten Marketing Europe.
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