THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN FASHION INDUSTRY

In London, luxury labels use social media to boost selling power during London Fashion Week through videos broadcast live on the internet from shows crammed with tweeting, blogging designers, editors and celebrities.  Two million viewers tuning in for a live streamed London Fashion from more than 100 countries that marked the largest audiences reached for clothing chain Topshop with their Topshop Unique’s latest collection. According to Topshop, the audiences of 200 million people were served with images and runway scenes as the result of Topshop’s partnership with Facebook. By doing so, a global coverage via Facebook contributed to Topshop’s sales as people can purchase the look on the runway instantly while they are streaming online. A number of items during the catwalk were sold out before the show was over.

Topshop’s Chief Marketing Officer, Justin Cooke told Reuters that the label was the first to utilize Facebook ‘likes’ into something useful for the brand and the first to commercialise social audience. In other cases, House of Holland partnered with eBay on virtual pop-up shop and designer Alice Temperly use “online runways” to showcase her Temperley London collections in efforts to embrace digital technology.

Social media channels really contribute to website peaks traffic such as Pinterest and Instagram. The industry needs to adapt with the growing technology and it can even be a part of full-time work for some people. Adding up, the interactive nature of social media helps brands have longer interaction for online fashion communities to participate in discussion of collection said Lucy Yeomans, the editor-in-chief of fashion retail site Net-A-Porter.com and former editor of Britain’s Harper’s Bazaar. Yeomans told Reuters that he strongly believes in the power of social media and thinks that people who doesn’t run along with it is missing a massive trick.

  

Editors vs. Bloggers

Not only is the fashion industry jumping into the social media world but also the editors to reach their audience. They compete with bloggers who sit in front rows of the runways using tweets, blogs and pictures of their own. Magazine and newspapers editors even become celebrities in the virtual world. For instance, the editor of Britain’s Glamour Magazine, Jo Elvin on Twitter has over than 63, 000 followers and on top of it, Joe Zee, the creative director of US Elle Magazine has 155, 000 followers. On the basis, journalist’s media coverage is more powerful in value compared to advertising as claimed by Katie Mitchell-Baxter, the account manager at PR company Good Relations. According to Claudia Crow, the creative director of boutique consultancy Talk PR, magazines such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar and The Telegraph is leading in fashion news reporting. It is crucial for them to be in that position to compete with smaller outlets and bloggers.

 by SyazAmalina

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