Unusual Methods of Promotion in London

When I was in London, I went in search of some unusual methods of communication. As I visited on the same day as I went to London Fashion Week I didn’t have time to visit a number of different places as I would’ve like to but I chose to visit Oxford Street as it’s a well known shopping destination with large stores, so I believed that they are more likely to be innovative and ahead of the game with their promotion.

First of all I visited Topshop’s flagship store and visiting during LFW proved to be the perfect time as they were promoting the Topshop Unique show in various ways that I haven’t seen other brands do before. Instead of the usual window displays featuring mannequins wearing the clothing, Topshop had a big screen displaying ‘live trends’ from LFW directly from the Twitter account’s of their “favourite editors, stylists, and bloggers”. This meant that anybody passing by on Oxford Street could see which trends were being spotted at LFW and go in and buy fitting products (e.g. something 70s inspired) from Topshop before the designer garments even hit the stores.

Emilio de la Morena A/W 15 at LFW

If you have read my previous post you will know that on Tuesday 24th February I visited London Fashion Week and took some street style shots whilst I was there. After doing this for an hour or so we wanted to try and get into a show, as we knew that sometimes they ask for ‘fillers’ to make sure that every seat is full so the show looks busy. At 12.30pm the Christopher Raeburn show was on in the BFC Courtyard Show Space which is situated in the middle of Somerset House, so we went and stood by the entrance where people with tickets were queueing and slowly being let inside. After standing there for a while we realised we were in the wrong place, and the standing queue for people without tickets was actually the opposite side. We were now at the back of the queue and knew we had no chance of getting in plus it was freezing as the sun had gone in. However, we thought we could stay there and be at the front for the next show at 1.30pm. That was until a woman closed the queue and said to go back round to the other side.

Street Style at London Fashion Week

On Tuesday 24th February, I headed to London with others from my course to go to the last day of London Fashion Week. We had wanted to go on Sunday as there were more shows on that day and we thought we would be able to get better street style shots but due to train complications we settled on visiting Tuesday and now I am so glad we did! Upon arrival at Somerset House around 11 we found that it wasn’t too busy yet as the next show didn’t start until 12.30 but it was the best time for us to take street style shots as it meant there was enough space and no crowding. Somerset House proved to be the perfect backdrop for taking photos with it’s gorgeous architecture but what made it even better was that the sun was shining too. The atmosphere there was great and everywhere you looked there were amazing outfits.

NYFW Favourites

It’s that time of year when designers are showing their Autumn/Winter 15-16 collections on the catwalk at various different fashion weeks. This means that currently much of my spare time is and will be spent on Vogue’s website looking at all of the looks from different shows, especially since A/W is probably my favourite season to dress for. The past couple of days I’ve been looking at all of the New York Fashion Week shows and thought I would briefly share a few of my favourite looks – which were very hard to narrow down.

Promotion at Pure

On Tuesday 10th February, I had the opportunity to visit Pure – a fashion buying event in London where buyers have the chance to observe many different brands in one location and place orders with them. As all of these brands are in one place they are directly competing with each other meaning they need to use promotional techniques to communicate messages towards other businesses to persuade them choose to stock their brand – B2B promotion. Whilst I was at Pure, I observed a number of different promotional tools being used. Prepare yourself for a photo-heavy post…

Visual Merchandising

One of the biggest opportunities for brands to promote themselves at Pure is through visual merchandising. Brands each have their own stand to showcase their clothing and this is the most obvious way that a brand can communicate their personality and make their products look appealing to buyers. Above is the Lavish Alice stand which was spacious, white, and looked clean. The products were easy to see and along one wall they were colour co-ordinated which looked appealing to the eye. This was one of the most effectively laid out stands in my opinion, and whenever I walked past it was always busy.

Brands & Branding

The topic of this week’s Fashion Promotion seminar was Brands and Branding. Following a two hour lecture and three hours of group work if I claimed to have been enthusiastic for the seminar then I would be lying. A coffee and a vitamin water boosted my energy though and when the seminar began I became instantly engaged. The task was to imagine that we, as people, were brands and create a mood board of images that represents who we are and what differentiates us from others – our brand identity.

At first I was quite apprehensive to start because, to be honest, I think of myself as a relatively boring person who likes similar things to most girls my age and didn’t really know where to start. Then Anna said you can include things that you love and aspire to as well as characteristics you may already have and activities that you do, which gave me a prompt.

I began by using Pinterest to find images as it’s a site that I often use for inspiration but when I struggled for ideas of what to search for I decided that I would use my tumblr account as the images I reblog reflect my personality. This definitely helped me as most of the images on my board came from there.
Regarding the content of my mood board, I firstly included fashion items that I hope to own in the future including a black Chanel Boy bag and black patent Christian Louboutin shoes. As well as representing what I aspire to, I believe these items also reflect my personality as they show that I like quite timeless pieces. I also included housing and interior that I aspire to as well because I think that how people decorate their houses can define their personality. I then moved onto adding images of what represents me already, these included: iced coffee as it’s one of my favourite drinks, Zara as it’s my favourite place to shop, a book as I enjoy reading, Charlotte Tilbury make up as it’s my favourite beauty brand and more. I liked the outcome of my mood board in the end but I feel like for the amount of time it took me to create it doesn’t show how I differentiate from others very strongly. I think that a viewer could interpret and understand some aspects of my personality but it could be improved by adding stronger images to emphasise certain characteristics of mine.

After creating the mood board we had to try and come up with a logo for our brand. This was more difficult than creating the mood board as the logo is one of the tangible aspects of a brand that stands out the most and is often how consumers identify brands.

I used my name in a bold, capitalised font which looks minimalistic yet elegant and timeless. Then, inspired by Chanel’s interlinked mirrored C’s, I took the initial of my surname and flipped it before placing it in front of the start of my first name to connect them both. If I had more time to work on my logo I probably would’ve experimented with getting rid of my full first name and only using my initials as I personally prefer shorter/smaller logos as they look cleaner.

The final task to do was to create a brand onion but because I spent longer on the mood board I didn’t completely finish mine so I didn’t want to post a picture of it but I felt like using words to define my brand values and personality helped me to think of more ideas of images for the mood board that would portray my identity stronger. From this I learnt that I need to manage my time more effectively next time so that everything is complete.

To conclude, I found this seminar particularly insightful as it shows how much effort goes into branding making sure that both tangible and intangible aspects of the brand strongly represent their identity and differentiate them from their competitors in order to succeed in their chosen market.