What can make someone spend $100 on a T-shirt? Or $400 on a leather bag, when knockoffs are available for a fraction of that cost, but without the nameplate? What makes teenagers buy anything and everything with a certain label on it? Could it be the brand?
It is this fanatic dedication to fashion and apparel brands that drove fashion brands to the Web. According to research results from Miller-Williams, released this July, e-commerce shoppers say more than 80% of the reasons behind their decision to purchase is outside the realm of their online experience. What matters to shoppers is the brand.
One can easily convey a brand experience on the Web - look and feel, brand attributes, identifiers, and other cornerstones of a brand. But what about physical attributes of a product? Shoppers can look at a nice sweater online, but they're left with questions: Will it fit loose or tight? Is the color exactly what's shown on the computer screen or is it slightly darker or lighter? Is it soft and comfortable or is it itchy?
According to a June, 2001 article in Red Herring magazine, consumers cite their inability to try clothes on as their main reason for hesitating to buy clothing online. But sites have come up with some innovative ways to get around the fear of buying something that won't fit. Landsend.com pioneered the approach of using "virtual models." Shoppers can create a virtual model of their body to see how clothing will fit. And this approach is helping - shoppers who use the feature are nearly 20% more likely to purchase, and they tend to spend 16% more in their average orders than shoppers who don't use the virtual modeling technology.
Other sites have used technologies that enable online shoppers to visually zoom in on products, so that they can get a feel for fabrics, collars and other product attributes by getting a closer look. Some retailers even have full-body scanning facilities, available at offline retail outlets, which can take measurements and store them in an online profile.
Getting Shoppers to the Online Experience
With all of this money invested in technology to bring the online experience closer to that of the offline experience, fashion marketers have to do what they can to realize an ROI on their investments. But how do they keep consumers engaged?
"By keeping merchandise and content fresh and accessible," says Julie Kessler, online marketing manager for Bebe Stores.
Indeed, online fashion sites need to move as quickly as their offline counterparts, which may revamp product offerings as quickly as every two weeks. As one might imagine, keeping things fresh is vital, yet time- and resource-consuming for a multi-channel fashion retailer. At least one high-end fashion brand has seemingly opted-out of the fresh game, instead relying on a fashion destination site to do the heavy lifting to showcase new collections. Style.com currently displays Gucci's fall 2002 ready-to-wear line, while the Gucci.com site lags behind with the spring/summer collection.
What Online Marketing Techniques Work?
But how do fashion retailers get consumers to their sites in the first place?
"E-mail campaigns have proven to be the best way to increase traffic to the site," says Kessler. "I find that they act as a memory jog and people take a moment out of their day to visit the site when they receive an opt-in e-mail. Our open rate has stayed consistently at 23%."
Leveraging the combination of brand loyalty and the offline consumer touch points of offline retail establishments can give fashion marketers a great way to build opt-in e-mail lists.
"Currently we collect opt-in e-mails on mailing list cards at the store and have them sent to a data-entry house, where they are entered into a spreadsheet and imported into the opt-in database," says Kessler. "We also obtain e-mail addresses via an opt-in field on the home page and at registration. As a company we have a number of additional databases and are working at merging them into one central location."
What about banners and other traditional forms of online marketing? Kessler says they haven't worked as well as she might have liked.
"Banner ads and advertising on large fashion sites have not yielded the ROI we expected," she says.
Could this be a function of an increasingly fractionalized market? The shorter attention spans among the younger generation that drives the market? Perhaps experiential marketing is the way to go.
Fashionable Fashion Advertising
Last summer, just following the BMW Films campaign, Levi's promoted its Silvertab sub-brand of jeans via an online contest. Consumers were posed the question at the Lost Change site, "What would you do if you found $100,000?" Continuing on that theme, Levi's released a series of Webisodes comprising an Internet film that followed the adventures of a number of friends who found a large sum of money. Consumers who watched the series of Webisodes were encouraged to become active participants by searching for clues and tracking the movements of the characters in the film. Participants could earn prizes, including Motorola mobile phones and Silvertab clothing. The standalone site also included an online store, where users could purchase both Silvertab and Motorola products.
Dangerously Low Dough Show
This year Levi's is turning to music with a special concert. From Ticketmaster.com, consumers can buy tickets to see an all-star Gen Y list of rock acts including Offspring, The SexPistols, Blink 182, Social Distortion, Buzzcocks, Vandals, Pennywise, Unwritten Law and others. For those who cannot attend the event, Levi's is making some of the performances, interviews with the musicians and other footage from the show available for viewing on the Music Choice cable network for viewing later in the year. This mix of cutting-edge entertainment reinforces the desired "dangerous" feel that Levi's is looking for and is a 180-degree change from last year's less provocative, yet very fashionable integrated promotion.
Indeed, last year's Silvertab imagery was very different than this years' Dangerously Low campaign. Using a combination of different interactive and traditional tools, Levi's is able to keep its white-hot fashion mystique fresh enough for most 15- to 24-year-old girls to be sporting hip huggers in 2002.
Be My Buddy
Another killer app use of technology was used this year by Hachette Filipacchi to extend the ELLEgirl brand. This fashion online/offline publication used instant messaging to increase traffic to the newly launched Web site, and increase awareness of the new magazine ELLEgirl.
The company turned to Active Buddy, a software application that communicates with users via natural language conversations over any two-way text-messaging platform. Found increasingly on AOL, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo!, these agents, or "bots," deliver content and services by responding to conversational queries. Communication with an interactive agent is nearly instantaneous and agents can effectively answer hundreds of simultaneous queries per second, 24/7.
You can also find them on SMS and pagers, which are harnessing the explosive growth that instant messaging and wireless tools have among teens and young adults. Currently, over 100 million consumers have installed one or more free IM clients.
How did it work for ELLEgirl? In a five-month period, the site garnered more than 7 million visits, with 1.4 million unique users visiting the site. In month one alone, ELLEgirlBuddy increased traffic to the site by 83%, increasing magazine subscriptions of ELLEgirl magazine by 500%. The ELLEgirlBuddy app itself was used by young girls an average of 40 minutes, chatting back and forth on subjects ranging from beauty, fashion, movies, horoscopes, weather and games.
The Runway Ahead
With the exception of a few major legacy fashion publications, this category is a relatively low ad spender. Fashion marketers rely mostly on their retail partners to generate traffic. Word of mouth is huge, so the viral element is key to any important initiative.
Most fashion marketers have special initiatives for getting celebrities to don their logos. The media often plays a large part. Just consider every run way-like entrance into some awards event and see the first question Joan Rivers asks, "Who are you wearing?"
Publishers like Hearst, Hachette Filipacchi and Conde Nast have understood the importance of fashion content as a selling tool for years. Fashion editors decide what models and designers go into each magazine issue. Regardless of who's also advertising, fashion consumers read between the lines for these types of subtle endorsements. The biggest hurdles by the publishers have been how to share all the content they normally print online while still generating very high CPMs and subscription revenue that their fashion publications are known for.
Each has dabbled with the Net, but has essentially stopped their initiatives due to lack of focus. However, with subscriptions growing online, we expect to see a return to fashion content and advertising online, once there is a stronger revenue opportunity.
It's ironic that interactive media is well known for the blurring of the lines between editorial and advertising, yet has not found a way to substantiate the opportunity fashion marketers' need to connect with consumers. For a category that has merchandised itself like that, especially with the haute couture side of the business, it's partly generational. However, as teens and young adults continue to embrace the Web for social, informational and fashion purposes, fashion marketers will have a wealth of opportunities still untapped to strut their stuff!
