The Difficulty of Comunicating the value of Textiles

Both my research (for the field study subject) and part of my internship (for the Summer field study) have been focused on analysing the knowledge gap between the industry and consumers around the characteristics of textiles, and what is the best strategy to communicate them effectively.

Terms such as "rapid absorption of liquid moisture with high drying rate" can be better understood as "absorbs moisture -dries quick" by everybody. This is common sense. But then why brands do sometimes things so complicated? Communicating properties becomes important now that new fabrics are developed due to the increase and volatility of the price of raw materials used by the textile industry. The luxury sector is specially sensible to this change, and the brands need to learn how to explain consumers the reasons for choosing these new materials and be clear about the reasons their prices are still high. The meaning of a brand for a consumer is linked to the brand’s relationship to people, places, things and other brands. Brand meaning develops from the interchange among three environments: the marketing, the individual and the cultural (Brioschi 2006). Digital Marketing is a good way of communicating fabrics' properties, because the followers of the brand (who would be more willing to buy), can receive messages regarding the properties in a regular basis. So they will learn these properties by repetition. From the brand's point of view, using this method is less expensive than other methods. 

As a case study, when I developed the Digital Marketing strategy for Pyrates, a brand of high-end joggings, the main objective was to create a virtual social community around the brand, what we defined as "pyratesworld", using Social Media and other digital channels.

The Digital Marketing Institute defines digital marketing as “the use of digital technologies to create an integrated, targeted and measurable communication which helps to acquire and retain customers while building deeper relationships with them” (Smith, 2007; cited in Wymbs, 2011).

The internet has its own social interactive codes, that can vary from country to country and from lifestyle to lifestyle. “Lifestyle refers to a pattern of consumption reflecting a person’s choices of how he or she spends time and money, but in many cases it also refers to the attitudes and values attached to these behavioral patterns” (Solomon et al., 2006). Studying our consumers' lifestyles helps brands to know what are their life choices, as well as attitudes and values. In fact, I would say that in planning a digital marketing campaign, monitoring our target becomes as important (if not more) as thinking what we want to communicate. 

In my case, thinking in how to better communicate the properties of fabrics has become a "work in progress" & "learn by doing" task. There's no secret recipe for brands. It's just collect info, try, monitor and if you did something wrong, try again. Good news: monitoring becomes almost immediate, making fashion digital marketing challenging and exciting at the same time! I guess you know what part of the industry I want to develop my career in...

References:

Brioschi, A. 2005. Is luxury selling Dreams? The Role of Advertisement in Shaping Luxury Brands’ Meaning, in J.E. Schroeder, M. Salzer-Mörling (eds.) Brand Culture. London: Routledge

Solomon, M.; Bamoosy, G., Askegaard,S. and Hogg, M. 2006. Consumer Behaviour. A European Perspective. Essex: Prentice Hall

Wymbs, C. (2011). Digital marketing: The time for a new “academic major” has arrived. Journal of Marketing Education [online] Available at: http://jmd.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/02/20/0273475310392544.abstract (Last Accessed 31-08-2015)