Celebs and Fashion

In the first edition of our Social War research after 50 worldwide fashion brands, we already spotted the enormous trend to use celebrities to promote your brand and sell your fashion.

The way in which you do it, determines also the sophistication of your audience. The worst approach we find the simple use of giving your clothes to celebrities and hope that their fans will be wearing it. It is pretty shallow, but hey, nobody ever got poor of underestimating their audience. So they say. However, if you think in pyramids, you might chop off the head of the pyramid and only reach the baseline. Even though, that’s where the masses are, it will be damn hard to ever reach higher than that. With marketing we have never seen a good case of reverse upgrading. You start selling your brand to the masses, and then want to make it exclusive. Who can fill us in here?

The next step in celebrity use is in differentiating the celebs. So you start selecting those idols, that are only known in a small group or niche, but have great potential for one day going big and the masses love them. What if you would sponsor some controversial rap artist that might be acceptable 3 years later. That is a smarter strategy. It allows your brand to grow together with the celebrity and find the best possible audience.

Then there are numerous ways to deal with celebrities: dress them for red carpet events, sponsor their tour, use them as models for your displays and commercials. But the most advanced way to do this nowadays is invite them to design their own collection under your brand umbrella. The latest example, and a smart one we think, is set by Versace. They use M.I.A. for their Versus line. M.I.A. has studied fashion even, and she’s know for very graphic language and use of graphics in her performances. We think this is an excellent combination that picks up a nice trend, that will only grow. Because it is youthful, new, different and not more of the same what she will bring.