2017 Graduate Fashion Week Marketing Campaign Proposal

Louise Lea Assignment 1: Digital Strategy Proposal for Graduate Fashion Week

CONTENTS PAGE 1.Introduction 2.SWOT Analysis 3.SOSTAC 4.Pre Event 5.During Event 6.Post Event 7.Conclusion 8.References 9.Appendices

List Of Figures Figure 1: Graduate Fashion Week Social Media Following Figure 2: 7 P’s Business Model Figure 3: Net-a-Porter Social Media Following Figure 4: Net-a-Porter Customer Infographic Figure 5: Email Marketing Mock Up Figure 6: QR Code Mock Up Figure 7: Primary Research: Survey Monkey Responces

1.Introduction Graduate fashion Week (GFW) is an opportunity for students who are undertaking the transition between graduation from university and seeking job roles within the industry (Webb, 2016).

Graduate Fashion Week is one of the most anticipated events amongst fashion students from leading institutions, allowing students to showcase themselves as a brand amongst other budding fashion graduates from the most prestige fashion universities around the world. Founded by Jeff Banks in 1991, Graduate fashion week is not only a fashion event but a charity, which allows students to exhibit their work to industry professionals, major brands and network amongst peers and potential employers.

The event is sponsored by major fashion brands, such as ASOS, BooHoo, M&S and Debenhams (GraduateFashionWeek.com, 2018). Students across all fashion courses are eligible to partake, as well as bloggers and journalists, who are also looking

for recognition. Graduate Fashion week has been responsible for kick starting the careers for some of the biggest names in fashion, such as Christopher Bailey and Stella McCartney. This report will analyze and assess the importance of digital communication channels, through primary and secondary methods of research, with the intent to formulate a new digital marketing proposal strategy for Graduate Fashion Week.

Graduate Fashion Week Social Media Following: Figure 1:

10,869 Likes On Facebook 27,00 Followers on Instagram 10,000 Followers on Twitter

2. SWOT Analysis Firstly, the most distinguishable strength of Graduate Fashion Week, it’s the most successful and unique platform in providing deserving students with valuable recognition from potential employers. 60 universities take part in the event (Cherrington, 2015). Potential employers work alongside the competing institutions and provide guidance and direction in which skills and qualities they desire from students, which will assist and prepare them for future employment. Sponsorships from major fashion brands and companies have contributed and supported the charity, and is somewhat responsible for their success.

Graduate fashion week in itself is a charity and therefore relies heavily on the sponsors and funding from external organizations. Regardless of their simplistic approach, the limitations when it comes to initial funding for the event itself is preventing graduate fashion week to exceed to its fullest potential. When it comes to the digital aspect such as their social media channels the reach is very limited and also the recognition of GFW on a global scale is also very narrow (Doyle, 2017). (Please refer to figure 7.)

With advances in technology since Graduate Fashion week initially began in 1991, GFW can potentially take advantage of the digital opportunities that are available to them in this generation (Doyle, 2017), this would enable them to stay current and contemporary allowing them to expand and evolve further if they had a stronger digital presence. By using their digital platforms they have available to them more effectively, such as snapchat and Instagram this will help to them engage with a wider audience (NotJustALabel.com, 2017).

As Graduate Fashion week is evolving year after year, building a bigger and stronger name for themselves and their reputation.

However, this may not be seen as a positive, GFW as a brand may lose their core values and authenticity if they become more popular. Additionally, Graduate Fashion week have to compete with the likes of Central Saint Martin’s and the Royal College of Art graduate fashion shows, who of which attract a more high-end audience and luxury recruiters (Doyle, 2017).

3. SOSTAC Business Model (PR Smith, 2014)

Situational Analysis: Situational analysis is an important factor to consider when a new idea is being contemplated, as it will ensure that the final chosen ideas will be risk free (Smith, 2015). Graduate Fashion Week is expanding rapidly on a global scale every year, proving the event itself is highly successful and unique. Its reputation with industry professionals is additionally a major strength, however Graduate Fashion Weeks reach is very limited in regard to its audience and this is something which needs to be reconsidered. The target audience is generally an older demographic, mainly fashion graduates and employers from the fashion industry.

Objectives: GFW is a celebration of raw talent and additionally is the largest networking platform for graduate students in the world (Roberts, 2017). However, the objective is to promote GFW further to maximize engagement and status, not only to the event itself but on their website. As mentioned earlier, the level of recruiters in which GFW attracts are very commercial, GFW should aim further to attract luxury recruiters (Doyle, 2017).

Strategy: In order to stay relevant and gain maximum recognition a partnership with Net-a-Porter and their fashion app “The Edit’ will be proposed. Partnerships are an innovative way of accessing a larger target market in order to strengthen an existing brand (Smith, 2015). If GFW can adapt on their previous strategies in addition to their new partnership with Net-a-Porter this will strengthen the brand and increase the overall recognition of the event itself.

Tactics In order to achieve the objectives, methods of promotion need to be adopted on a daily basis, before and after the event through social media platforms such as Instagram, snapchat, Facebook and push notifications via “The Edit�

App, additionally email notifications to GFW and Net-a-Porter subscribers.

Actions In order for the objectives to be met, Net-a-Porters digital team must be involved in order for the brand to be able to work coherently with GFW, additionally they must ensure social media and email marketing is employed to promote the event prior to the launch. They need to be actively working both pre-and post-event in order to ensure online traffic is being driven to the GFW website. Videographers, journalists also must also be employed to be present during the event.

Control In order to evaluate a digital strategy, there are various elements that can assist a brand in measuring its success rate, (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2016). Conversion rates can be reviewed, which can show how long the audience will spend looking at the content you are producing online. Additionally, volume measures this of which is regarding clicks, and reviewing that that the desired audience is engaging with the platform.

The 7 Ps Business Model for Grauate Fashion Week: The Customer Figure 2.

Product:

Physical Evidence

Online videos on YouTube channel, press images, social media posts.

People:

University graduates, Brand Ambassadors, Celebrities, Judges.

A charity and a recruitment platform for fashion graduates.

Processes

The initial build up, pre-and-post event.

Social media posts, advertisements through sponsors.

Exhibitions, Catwalk shows, student archives.

Promotion:

GFW is active on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. additionally promotions from sponsors, universities and brand ambassadors

Place:

Truman Brewery, Central London.

Price: GFW is a charity and therefore they heavily rely on the funding from their sponsors.

‘‘NET-A-PORTER brilliantly fuses content and commerce with unrivalled world-class editorial.

Anytime, anywhere, any platform... ’’ (net-a-porter.com)

Net-A-Porter Social Media Following Figure 3:

1.5 Million Likes On Facebook 3 Million Followers on Instagram 881,000 Followers on Twitter

The Net-A-Porter Customer Figure 4:

Age: 25-40

Interested in Arts and Dessign

ÂŁ22,00 Annual Average Spend on Fashion

ÂŁ17,000 Household Income

N E T - A - P O RT E R

x

G R A D UAT E - FA S H I O N WEEK

4. Pre Event In order to ensure Graduate Fashion Week is successful the initial build up is essential, this generally amounts to the buzz that is curated pre-event (Jackson, 2013), additionally, the audience needs to be well informed and enthusiastic about the upcoming event. Secondary Research has established that Graduate Fashion Week needs to attract a wider audience of luxury recruiters in order for the event to be as beneficial as possible for the graduates partaking, providing them with even more opportunities than before. A partnership with Neta-Porter.Com and their fashion and shopping App “The Edit” will enable GFW to attract a brand-new customer base, working coherently with The Edit and Net-a-Porter will enable to promote the charity on numerous platforms. “The Edit” is a free downloadable mobile App for IOS users, it is updated weekly with international catwalk collections, images, fashion news and lifestyle articles. Net-a-Porters overall digital approach to marketing and promotion is admirable, they successfully combine commerce and content digitally, therefore

are an appropriate selection for partnership with Graduate Fashion Week (Gilliland, 2016).

Net-a-Porter will announce their partnership and sponsorship with GFW to their subscribers via digital marketing. Digital marketing and promotion prior to the event is strategic and beneficial in which it will direct online traffic accordingly.

The overall budgeting for this partnership will be generally low cost, cross promotions have a high success rate therefore both parties will find this beneficial to partner with one-another (Anderson, 2016). GFW is a charity itself, therefore they do not have a large amount of money to fund expensive digital promotion strategies.

Email Marketing: Email marketing will be one of the most suitable and the chosen methods of promotion pre-event, as it enables information to be delivered from an organistation to the “opt in house list” and it is a considerable way of building relationships with customers and is relatively low cost (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2016). Emails will be sent to both GFW and Net-A-Porters subscribers informing them of the new partnership and what they can expect to see online in the run up to GFW and additionally what will be featured on The Edits app post event as well as an editorial on Neta-Porters digital magazine “Porter” .

Social Media: Additionally, posts on social media will also assist in the promotion of the event, social media marketing is a low-cost way of reaching the desired audience, it is also an effective way to analyze and monitor engagement (Evans, 2012).

Net-a-porters Instagram following is currently at 3 million followers, therefore it would be opportune to post imagery of selected 6 graduates from various universities, the imagery

posted on Instagram will be in relation to themselves and their work in which will be debuted during GFW, giving Net-A-Porters followers insight into GFW, as a large proportion of their followers will not be familiar with GFW’s reputation in addition to this, followers of Net-a-Porters social media platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Users will be asked to share competition posts onto their own feeds for their followers to see. Followers who engage with sharing these posts will automatically be entered into a competition draw, in order to win 4 tickets to Graduate Fashion Week and a £200 online voucher to spend at Net-A-Porter.com. This method of promotion is known as Viral Marketing, this particular strategy encourages services or messages to be shared on the internet (Scott, 2013).

Net-A-Porter is currently active on nine global social media platforms, and they have 85 million page views per day, therefore GFW’s partnership with the brand will be very well advertised.

Email Marketing Example: Figure 5:

To: louiselea199@outlook.com Reply to: Net-A-Porter

Dear Louise,

Exciting News!

We are proud to announce that we are the official partner of Graduate Fashion Week 2018. Sign up with the link below for regular updates and further event information, or ind us on Instagram, Facebook Twitter.

Fashion At Your Fingertips

5. During Event

Video Streaming:

barcodes which can bring up attached information such as text and imagery (Scott, 2013). They are an effective tool and is very popular within the fashion industry currently (Rizwan, 2017) . GFW, currently do have online archives available to search online, which can be found at artsthread. com, but it would appear from researching into this further, the last active student archives were uploaded in 2014 (Artsthread.com, 2017). By using QR codes via the app will make looking for a student even easier and quicker. When scanned by a smartphone at GFW, QR codes will bring up personal profiles of all participants of graduate fashion week, along with archives of their portfolios, all these archives and code scanners will be available through downloading “The Edit” app from the App store. Being able to archive graduate’s information in one place will make recruiters able to find additional information regarding graduates in which stand out to them, therefore assisting them with the recruitment process. With GFW being an event with over 1000 students participating (Graduate Fashion Week. com, 2018), an online Archive of portfolios would be an efficient and contemporary way of promoting the brand and the charities objectives, and a strong way of defining that Graduate Fashion week is a platform in order to help generate careers. The

With graduate fashion week being covered additionally through Net-a-Porters social media feeds, this means GFW need to take advantage of the new engaged followers they have gathered for the event. During the event, live streams will be taking place across both NetA-Porters and GFW’s social media platforms: Facebook Live, Instagram Live and also YouTube will be used to broadcast the shows throughout the day, YouTube is particularly a effective platform for promotion, YouTube itself has over 1 billion users. (Youtube, 2018) Giving followers a personalized and exclusive experience from their mobiles or computers and finally resulting in increased awareness of GFW. As GFW is becoming more and more well-known across the world every year, therefore it is important for them to be widely accessible across the globe. Live streaming is cost effective, and an innovative idea when it comes to digital strategies (Naylor, 2017) push notifications alert users when a certain account is going “Live” therefore ensuring maximum engagement from followers. The Archives of student’s work will be available videos filmed at the event will additionally on The Edit app, post event for up to 1 year be available on the Edits App, post event. after the event. The Edit app itself has a reach of 1.5 million (Net-A-Porter.com, 2018).

QR Codes:

Guests at the event can use their mobile phone devices to gather further insight about the graduates partaking in GFW. The use of QR codes will be implemented during GFW which each participant will have their own unique code, QR codes, also referred to as Quick Response codes are

QR Code Example:

Figure 6:

First Name: Abigal Last Name: Coop Location: Nottingham University/College: Nottingham Trent University Course Title: Fashion Communications Contact: abigal.coop@outlook.com

6. Post Event

VLOGS

footage and will be posted on the Edit App and on GFW.com and the links posted all social media platforms so they are accessible to all followers Follow up V-logs will be created during the event on GFW/Net-A-Porters Facebook, Instagram hosted by Porter Magazines Brand Editor, and Twitter Feeds. Video is a vital part of Sarah Bailey and Natalie Massenet. Natalie any digital marketing strategy (Grate, 2017) Massenet is a former fashion journalist, and founder of Net-A-Porter and additionally the chairman of the British Fashion council (Ellison, 2017). Additionally she will be a new brand ambassador to join Graduate Fashion Weeks team. Brand ambassadors are not paid endorsers, they are individuals who are passionate about a brand, the purpose of a In addition to this, articles will be published Net-a-Porters digital magazine ambassador is a powerful way of broadening a in customer reach and raises positive awareness “Porter�. Post GFW editorials will be of a brand (Writer, 2016). Vlogs are personal written by Porters journalist, regarding videos in which focus on an individual and the their experience of GFW. The articles discussion of a certain experience, Vlogging will be also being discussing the students has become a new trend in the fashion which stood out to them, pictures from the industry and it is an effective way of story- shows, favorite pieces and interviews from telling, brands have adopted Vlogging as an recruiters and sponsors. Digital publishing alternative to advertisements, as generally, has many advantages, one of which being watching short online videos are more compelling and satisfying for viewers to watch the simplicity of being able to spark (Thorley, 2017). The Vlog will be an insight discussions online, and the overall ease into some of the participants lives during and of being able to share content via social after GFW, finding out more information about networks, the vast majority of leading print the graduates and how it helped them from an publications are making their transition employability perspective, additionally them to digital to work coherently alongside giving advice and tips for future participants their printed publications (Varsani, 2017). at graduate fashion week, discussion of their collections and finally her personal experience of the event itself. The vlog will contain of interviews and behind the scenes

Digital Magazine Editorials

7.Conclusion To conclude, the research gathered regarding Graduate Fashion weeks digital promotional strategies has highlighted their need to re-asses their approach in order to reach their maximum potential, and widen their consumer base. GFW itself is a vibrant and unique platform in order to help students gain valuable creditability, to keep up with the everchanging advances in technology they must adapt with this in order to stay relevant. An effective digital promotion strategy is a key factor in which any brand must adopt in order to gain success. A partnership with a major digital brand such as Net-A-Porter, would assist GFW in gaining the recognition they need, Net-a-porter are not just an online retailer, but they have two Apps, a website, a digital and print magazine. They have worked hard in order to building their digital reputation, therefore would be beneficial and appropriate for GFW to pair with such a fashion forward and tech savvy brand. Net-a-porters is a global and recognizable, which would help to boost the awareness of Graduate Fashion week not only as an event but a recruitment platform and more importantly as a charity.

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9. Appendices Figure 7: