Strategy
Marketing Lessons From The Fashion Industry
Marketing Lessons From The Fashion Industry
To me, the greatest marketers are fashion icons. And by fashion icons I don’t mean supermodels or the best dressed celebrities. I mean the ordinary individuals who put in captivating work that suddenly makes them seem extraordinary. Some of my top fashion icons are André Leon Talley, former editor-at-large of Vogue magazine; Dapper Dan, the underground creative genius that bootlegged luxury fashion to pimps and gangstas; Diana Vreeland, who worked as a columnist and editor of Harper’s Bazaar and later served as the editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, and finally Anna Wintour, the private and mysterious British Journalist who has served as editor-in-Chief of Vogue since 1988, and Global Chief Content Officer for Condé Nast since 2020.
I study the work and follow the moves of these four individuals because I believe their subject matter knowledge is endless, obsessive passion is contagious, thinking is insanely divergent, product appreciation is deep, and the rebellious attitude to getting their work done is alluring to me. These five variables are the essential ingredients that are consistent across each individual’s profile, and I believe makes them extra-ordinary. Fashion or not, they are extremely savvy marketers of concepts and products who I believe can sell anything as long as they are interested in it or care about it enough. It’s like what Jay-Z said in ‘Dirt Off Your Shoulder’ – “I’m the realest that run it, I just happen to rap”.
So, these are incredible humans, but why are they great marketers? First factor we will explore is Vanity. As you know, the fashion world has been criticised for being unreal and vain. People in the industry supposedly act as if fashion is the true religion (pun intended), and nothing else exists – and I wonder why that is so wrong. If you don’t believe so much in the work that you do, how do you expect to make someone else believe in it? If Steve Jobs did not have a blinding belief in interface and experience design, would he have been able to convince others to become advocates enough to make Apple attain the status of the world’s most valuable company? I think not.
Anna Wintour is considered the most powerful woman in the global fashion industry, and I’m not even sure she’s ever sewed a stitch of fabric. Fashion designers treat her like the Queen of England and consumers are constantly trying to demystify her. But what makes Anna so powerful, is not only the mystery that lurks behind her dark shades and wicked bobs, it is that she captains Condé Nast – the ultimate lifestyle brand conglomerate, and a melting pot of vanity – which is a guaranteed marketing machine that sells out anything and anyone.
Next factor to look at will be Personality. Everyone that was or is a leading voice in the fashion industry, is an absolute original. From physical appearances to personal idiosyncrasies, the four aforementioned people are very authentic and unapologetic about how they carry themselves and how they are perceived. This comes across authentically in their personal branding which makes them absolute magnets to their various tribes. It makes connecting with their audiences easier, and it makes persuasion and conversion easier. While reading Dapper Dan’s memoir aptly titled ‘Made in Harlem’ – I noted an interesting story he told about touring Africa and ending up in Senegal, where the bulk of his money was spent buying beautiful fabrics which tailors made into nice suits for him. This almost got him stranded in Africa by the way. Dap likes to look fly, and one thing that is consistent about him and all the other fashion icons I follow, is the compulsive need to cultivate and appreciate style.
Another important factor is Showmanship. If you skim through fashion history; study roll-out plans, exhibitions, and sustaining conversations to drive sales and talkability, you’d note that fashion is highly histrionic. Fashion designers and some fashion editors are the greatest showmen. They know how to put on a show or magazine that makes everyone stop, point and talk. To me, Diana Vreeland still remains the only fashion editor who understood the charm of the human pose, the soul of an outfit, the personality of a typeface, and the architecture of a brilliant layout. She was the master of detail and exaggeration – and she embodied these two elements completely. Checkout her documentary ‘Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel’ whenever you can.
The final factor that makes fashion icons marketing geniuses is Sustenance. They understand the art of sustaining conversations long after exhibitions are over. The phrase ‘paint a picture with words’ was probably originally used to describe André Leon Talley. His deep love for style, taste and character, merged with his vast knowledge of the fashion industry helped him connect with fashion designers on a purely artistic level. This enabled him to tell the stories of their personality and collections long after the last model had left the runway.
Why Thinking Outside The Box Is NOT What You Think It Is
Why Thinking Outside The Box Is NOT What You Think It Is
I remember sitting in my first brainstorming session as a Communications Intern 8 years ago, when the account handler encouraged us to think outside the box and present a big idea to communicate the client’s business objectives. Like Professor X, I went deep into my mental faculties, I thought long and hard, I read Comms case studies, I thought some more, and came up with nothing. It really baffled me, how did I come up with nothing? Does this mean I’m dumb?
I have since developed as a Senior Consultant in my current profession and I have been part of several brainstorming sessions. I have also worked with some of the biggest brands in Nigeria and delivered several high level campaigns. The singular summation of my experience in delivering campaign strategies has been this – the most obvious solutions are the ones hardest to come by because of the self-imposed cultural constraints we work within.
‘Thinking outside the box’ what does that even mean? What is the box? How do you think outside of it? Simply put, the ‘box’ is the subculture we exist in as individuals in the society, and thinking outside of it means intentionally experiencing other subcultures that helps us see our challenges from a different perspective and help us get it. For the layman, subcultures are anything with a process or unique way of doing things – could mean industries, religion, professions, ethnic groups, social class, schools, fashion houses, animal groups, or even mechanical things like cars, blenders, hair dryers and so on. It’s basically anything that has an influence on our perspective.
The most important thing to understand about this statement of innovation heuristic is that ‘thinking outside the box’ is not really so much about your intelligent quotient (IQ), but your emotional quotient (EQ). ‘Thinking outside the box’ is also not about how much time you dedicate to thinking about it. Think about the statement ‘outside the box’ as a Venn diagram – your solution lies at the center of your experiences, and two other unique experiences. Now, depending on the challenge you are trying to solve or the sector you play in, your EQ will help determine what differing experiences are worth simulating or which unique experts to sit with in order to crack the case.
If you’ve seen Mad Men, you’d recall that the opening scene of the legendary advertising series illustrates exactly what I outlined in the preceding paragraph. Don Draper, creative director of the fictional Manhattan advertising firm, Sterling Cooper, is trying to solve an advertising challenge for Lucky Strike – a cigarette company, one of his agency’s top accounts. He is shown asking the busboy attending to him why he smokes a competition’s cigarette brand and the waiter provided a simple answer that refocused Don’s perception and helped him solve his challenge. Mind you, this scene was set in 1960 America when segregation was at its peak. Don is a young and accomplished white man, talking to an older black man who has nothing in common with the people he is trying to sell to, yet uttered the words that were key to a major insight for Sterling Cooper.
To illustrate further, if as a non-smoking Product Manager, I have been commissioned to lead a product development process for a smoking app, the mental model I am working with is limited because I do not possess knowledge of a smoker’s motivation, behavioural processes and incentives of the smoking experience. The reasonable thing to do in that case will be to covertly study the smoker by living their subcultural experience – get familiar with smokers at different stages of the habit, hangout where smokers hangout, talk to the sales people for cigarette brands, and talk to researchers of cigarette brands. By the time you are done, you would have a holistic perspective to the product user that will inform the interaction and brand design strategies that will make your product successful. This is why method acting exists, but that’s an aside.
I will end this article with the ancient story of a group of blind men who had never come across an elephant before. They learned and imagined what the elephant was like by touching it. The first person, whose hand landed on the trunk described it as a snake, another described its ear as a kind of fan, another described its leg as a tree-trunk. The blind man who placed his hand upon its side said the elephant is a wall. Another who felt its tail, described it as a rope. The last felt its tusk, stating the elephant is that which is hard, smooth and like a spear.
Each blind man failed in their description as a result of limited experiences. As process managers, business men, builders, and consultants, we are all blind men. Ultimately, whoever succeeds in solving innovative challenges is the person who has experienced the full picture. You should strive to be the blind man who touches all parts of the elephant. It takes time, but you will win, eventually, and the win is usually long-term.
How Music Is Rebuilding Trust In The Nigerian Personality, Internationally
How Music Is Rebuilding Trust In The Nigerian Personality, Internationally
When Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Adichie, gave her famous TED Talk – ‘The Danger of A Single Story’ – a lot of people could relate because of the context she spoke to. I’d first listened to the speech as a first year undergrad studying Psychology, and it completely blew my mind how she was able to fit the essence of my Social Psychology textbook into a less than 20-minute speech.
See, what the majority of people who listened to that TED Talk would not have fully grasped – understandably so – was that her talk was based on a concept known to the layman as a stereotype, which the Oxford dictionary describes as ‘a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing’.
Stereotypes in themselves are not due to evil or wicked intentions, in fact, stereotypes are as much a physiological fault as it is as a cultural fault – and the culprit to blame physiologically is something Psychologists call the Schema. A schema is ‘a cognitive framework or concept that helps organize and interpret information’ – basically a mental shortcut that human beings use to form urgent perceptions about people, things or situations.
Humans by nature are not built to think hard, simply because it’s not very adaptive. Imagine having to think long and hard about every tiny decision you make, such as, should you wipe your bum with your left or right hand? Should you turn the door handle up or down to open a door? – do you know how unproductive we’d all be if schemas didn’t exist? We’d all be standing around THINKING about tiny things that are necessary yet unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
Think of the schema as your wardrobe, there’s just so much clothes (information) it can take – so you put only the absolutely important and personalized things in there, then use a shortcut (schema) for everything else. Pictures, colors, shapes, smell, sounds, and tactile feedback are all the ways we make decisions about the world. This is where art, culture, and design directs our individual and/or group unconscious perceptions about the social world.
Which brings us to the point of this article – a point that will not take me very long to make if you understand everything I’ve tried to explain so far in this article.
The perception of the Nigerian personality has been scarred from the early days of credit card fraud, when broke Nigerian students in the United Kingdom were jailed and then deported. Since then, all kinds of scam or dubious ways of making money or gaining access have been associated with the Nigerian personality. Two familiar examples are; the extreme immigration experiences that are tied to our National passport, another less severe situation is the blocking of our regional IP addresses from accessing certain areas of the internet.
Now, I’m not saying scamming was the singular cause of prejudice against Nigerians internationally, however, it’s the singular most talked about keyword that has been sensationalized by the media – so much so that the ‘Nigerian Prince’ unconsciously became a part of pop-culture.
In recent times however, we can sense a shift in the breaking down of the barriers of entry across different industries; music, tech, and the design eco-system. Now, Nigerians are being hired en masse for remote tech and consulting positions. Nigerian artistes are being featured as headliners in international music festivals, and as part of cultural projects.
When Burna Boy won the Grammy Award for Best Global Music Album, I remember telling a friend how happy I was, because this was not only a win for Burna, it was also a win for the individual Nigerian who is pitching business projects in Europe, the individual Nigerian who goes to an all white school in Germany, the individual Nigerian who imports goods from China, and also the individual Nigerian creative voice.
Suddenly, these individuals are not being looked at sideways anymore. Music as a language of the soul has permeated the unconscious, and the ‘scammer’ and ‘untrustworthy’ schematic tags have now been replaced with ‘cool’ ‘entertaining’ ‘funny’ and ‘charismatic’ – a phenomenon that can be explained best by a concept Psychologists call the Halo Effect, which is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one’s opinion or feelings in other areas.
We like to think of Humans as complicated or mysterious, but the truth is human interaction can be boiled down to whether they simply like you or not, and this in part is being rectified by the Nigerian narrative that is being pushed by the works of Tems and her team, Wizkid and his team, Davido and his team, and every other creative voice representing the Nigerian personality across the world.
Social Engineering Is The Forbidden Fruit We Should All Be Eating
Social Engineering Is The Forbidden Fruit We Should Be Eating
I have always been fascinated with con artists. Not the ones that sit behind a computer and ask that you ‘rescue’ them from a prison in Rwanda so they can fly to you and will you their Grandfather’s riches. No, those guys are cowards.
The con artists I’m referring to are the Abagnales of the world, the ones that crawled and walked so that Nigerian Princes could run.
Anyone can hide behind a keyboard to do whatever, but the con artistry is only fully appreciated when it is a physical interaction because then, every move you make has the potential to either credit or discredit you.
It’s subtle, it’s pretty deep, it’s sensational, it’s an assumption of characteristics and features — it’s an electric emotional bond.
If you are the target, you are not sure WHY you feel the way you feel but what you don’t know is that every move has been designed to make you feel exactly the way you do.
It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? — the psychology behind it can be attributed to the amoral field of social engineering.
A quick search on Google will tell you that social engineering is ‘the use of deception to manipulate individuals into divulging confidential or personal information that may be used for fraudulent purposes’. Meh.
While this is largely true, I’d say the preceding paragraph is a flippant definition for a disruptive social tool, and I don’t blame anyone for perceiving it this way because people fear what they don’t understand.
The thing about lies is that the liar dresses it up so beautifully in order to distract the mark from seeing that the matter has no substance. But I often wonder why people with substance are not just bothered to dress theirs up nicely enough to attract, lol maybe because they think the truth will set them free.
My definition of social engineering is; The appeal to the unconscious mind through verbal and most importantly, non-verbal cues. That’s just all it is, an appeal — “like me”, “interact with me”, “trust me”.
It’s what organisations have been indirectly saying to their customers. It’s what celebrities have always wanted from their fans. It’s what everyone would like to have from their larger communities.
It’s not manipulation, it’s a calculation of socially agreeable cultural interactions as an appeal to the unconscious mind. When we reverse-engineer our perceptions of social engineering, only then can we begin to enjoy its low hanging fruits.
Think about it. Back in the days, we feared hackers. It wasn’t until we realised that when we flip the intentions behind the actions, then we could mine that knowledge for our social advantage and protection.
Why Should We Social Engineer?
There is a lot of chatter going on in the news, on TV, on social media, even on the streets, everyone’s got something to say. Communication on an individual and organisational level has become a huge d**k swinging contest, a cycle that rinses and repeats.
It’s not a battle of who’s being heard by the relevant stakeholders but who’s making the loudest noise. Communication has become a game of impressions and Twitter trends. The audience is tone-deaf to brand communications.
There is a huge information overload and everyone is sick and tired of it. Influence is the singular most important thing to possess in these streets. It’s as simple as it’s complicated.
If you check within the Psychological context, another definition of Social Engineering emerges which says, “The use of centralised planning in an attempt to manage social change and regulate the future development and behaviour of a society”.
Social Engineering is in-depth research into culture and lifestyle. Social Engineering is the management of sensation and perception. Social Engineering is why the celebrity culture is rabid. Social Engineering is why religion is a thing. Social Engineering is why a lot of people are unemployed. Social Engineering is why a lot of businesses are shutting down.
Who Should Social Engineer?
Every entity that wants to win.
The Role of Visual Literacy in Modern Public Relations
The Role Of Visual Literacy In Modern Public Relations
The first time I heard the term ‘Visual Literacy’ was while watching Martin Scorcese’s two hour masterclass on Filmmaking. The term struck a chord within me because I’m a highly visual person and I understand the power it has on planned behaviour. It also resonated with some very strong opinions I had around designing things to either feel good and/or look good, for better impact.
For anyone who is a brand communicator and seeks to influence most especially, it is important to understand that just like language and its dialects, visual literacy is nuanced and you can’t just wing it. Well you can, if you truly understand the science behind the art.
According to Wikipedia, Visual Literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies the interpretation of a written or printed text.
Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be through a process of reading. If as communicators, we are able to deconstruct and understand the rules of design, only then will we have nailed the ultimate purpose of communication, which is interaction.
Traditionally, the crux of Public Relations by nature is to approach communication campaigns through text based tactics. The idea is to persuade through reason and logic.
While this route is absolutely valid, PR professionals also need to step back and read the room. Why? Because even though these tactics may have worked a decade ago, it may not necessarily have any kind of impact now since the audience is experiencing an information overload.
I mean yeah, the clients like features and op-eds, but does your audience? Are we all just shouting into a blackhole? In the race for the mind, are we Usain Bolt or the other suckers that couldn’t catch up?
You have to understand that this is not about demographics, it’s about psychographics. It’s about beliefs, sensations, perceptions, memory and validation.
The medium is now the message — and the impact of the message heavily depends on how it has been encoded in the human brain using shapes, texts, textures, patterns and colors.
It should be known however that the role of visual literacy alone is not the ultimate cure-all. Communication is multi-sensory and I expounded on that larger picture in my piece that’s featured in this year’s Nigeria PR Report. Please get your copy as it features the perspectives of other thinkers in the communication space.