My super favorite blogger Millionaire Socialite has an interesting discussion of premium denim brands which has extended itself in a most interesting fashion into the realm of customer demand. While I wish I had gotten in on this sooner as I have a real appreciation for the whole designer denim thing, I find the current discussion on customer demand more intriguing. Phil has a little diagram that shows communications in fashion markets. 
Which I think is clearly faulty. Phil-How can you talk about the fashion mafia and not include them in the diagram? You have forecasting material and inspirational garments feeding into the designers who then communicate with buyers who operate with ranges and sales figures but you have completely left out the fashion editor!
Phil references Kathleen’s discussion of “push” manufacturing which focus on branding and image to create demand. But I would say that fashion editors participate even more actively in branding and image pushing than even the best marketing director of a fashion house. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing either. We as consumers need mediators in the consumption process. I appreciate having help in the decision making process because I obviously deal with many other issues in my life besides fashion. Let’s leave problem of advertising budgets and how it influences the editorial process out for now.
My main concern here is that customer demand is heavily driven by editorial content. If a pair of jeans are featured in a publication they tend to do better than one that is simply marketed well and sold to the appropriate buyers. Customer demand is stoked more by seeing a piece in a respected publication (respect being an entirely different issue here) than by any sort of branding or “push” campaign. Why? Because most people do not have the time, energy, or desire to ponder their consumption choices seriously. They do not debate whether they want unbranded jeans but rather which pair of jeans is going to get them the right combination of elements (respect, prestige, comfort, fit, price range) and often the only way to discover that is via the editorial process. The synergy between product and editorial is powerful, and one that marketers can harness. I think in the future advertising dollars will go to smaller, more targeted, and likely new media, ventures that go straight to the demographic of choice. In other words, we will see a melding of customer demand, editorial content, and branding. So if you want unbranded jeans you will go to whatever zine, blog, or new magazine that covers your particular taste maker lifestyle which will likely cover just that sort clothing. The company that makes those jeans will know what you read because the zine or blog will target their readers specifically and let advertisers know not just how many eyes but what sort of eyes are out there. Advertisers, editors, and consumers will be more targeted and that means customer demand will finally be met. Or at least that is my fervent hope.
Um, Julie, the diagram *is* the fashion mafia
Full response pending, of course.
This is a brilliant piece of writing for so many reasons. Having worked for many years as a fashion and beauty journalist, I’ve seen how a single mention in a “what’s in your makeup bag?” story in InStyle can make a small cosmetics company–I once mentioned that an actress on Beverly Hills 90210 wore an obscure perfume found only at Fred Segal, and it literally launched a business for a woman who had been brewing the stuff up in her kitchen. We think of fashion magazines as fluff, but they’re actually driving an enormous industry and doing so symbiotically–as you said, fashion mags are helpful to readers, as they are to designers and retailers.
Right now, companies in all kinds of industries are scrambling to figure out how to create symbioses online–and it occurs to me that they would do well to hire thinkers (and bloggers) like you to parse the situation for them, rather than relying on “old media” ad agencies. Just a thought.
“We as consumers need mediators in the consumption process.”
Hmmm. I find this assertion a bit puzzling. I can see why finding a listing of “where to buy” for certain garments could be useful. But I can honestly say that in forty-eight and a half years, I have not bought one single garment based on someone else’s say-so as to its fashionableness. Not one reporter, not one editor, not one fashion magazine. If I see a garment and I like it, like the way it looks and like the way it fits, I buy it. I love clothes, I enjoy designing them, making them, reading about them and writing about them, but I’ve never required anyone else’s input to determine what I like or what I buy.
Did you see _The Island_? The entire thing was a gigantic product placement. Although I haven’t seen anyone in Stralette Johannson’s white jumpsuit. Yet.
And BellaDonna, *thank you*. You’re a dose of reality the advertorial (I didn’t make this word up, I swear) world is deeply in need of.
BellaDonna-THAT is exactly my point. You know what you want, I know what I want, but more often than not I don’t know where to find it, where it is available, or how to get the best deal. That is what I mean by mediated consumption. People are distinct taste and desires but too often things are lumped down to the lowest common denominator. Lucky tells you what to buy, lining up skirt after skirt after skirt (I pity the girls that staff the fashion closet at Lucky) in the hopes that one of them will work for just about every reader. They tell you what to buy for certain looks.
What believe needs to be done is target the exact content a reader wants. If you are interested in classic looks then you need a magazine that will help you pursue that look. If you are into punk you need someone to help you more fully realize that aesthetic. Magazines should be more consumer oriented in that they are perhaps like personal shoppers, helping you realize your style without even compromising your aesthetic. They suggest things but it is always targeted towards you.
Advertizers and marketers benefit just as much as reader in this situation because they know just what sort of readers they are getting as opposed to just how many eyes. Thus marketing and editorial form a kind of mutual benefit synthesis. Editorial helps readers to more fully realize their style (because frankly I have ideas of what I like but actually finding it can be a real drag) and marketers can then pinpoint the kind of product a reader is looking for. So instead of getting annoying ads for both Puma and Gucci when all you want is Puma (or Gucci) you are helped by the editors to find clothing that fits your athletic hip lifestyle and then advertizers have chance to point out that they too have products that might help realize your lifestyle as well.
but you need both sides of the equation obviously. Marketers have an agenda and as much as they must be pushing a product you like they are still pushing a product. Editorial has the freedom to explore a range of options to best support the kind of vision their readership desires. But there is no reason that both marketing and editorial can’t find a better balance. And I believe that new media ventures can and will do this.
Hmmmm. (Again with the “hmmmmmm.” And no, it’s not because I can’t remember the words to the song.) Ostensibly, what you suggest seems like such a reasonable possibility, yet … the last time a magazine listed information which was useful to me (the Bucks County, PA, location of a sadly-departed cashmere outlet) was in … 1978. Lucky has yet to make a suggestion that would so much as stir my blood, let alone open my wallet. Can you explain to me how these niche magazines can be successfully marketed to their niche groups, considering how expensive it is to launch a magazine? My reseasrch has shown me that, despite a really strong consumer interest, it hasn’t been possible to keep a magazine geared toward the plus-sized woman afloat; the magazines can’t get the advertisers, despite the overwhelming interest in something that caters specifically to the plus-sized female consumer. This tells me that the magazines actually seem to exist for the advertiser, not the consumer. What benefit could these specialty magazines confer that the target consumer could not garner for himself/herself by going onto the internet, and doing a search for the desired item? Those of us with highly specialized or individual tastes, to whom these specialty magazines might ostensibly be geared, are, I suspect, the group least likely to be influenced by somebody else’s opinion. (Hola to the James Liu, and you are very welcome.) There are certainly garments and accessories that I would like very much to have, but it’s not because some celebrity has them, wears them, etc., much less because some fashion editor or reporter thinks I should want them, and my most successful hunting, to date, has either been on foot, in person; on the internet; or making it myself.
Aha! Now you see mt point! I am NOT talking about print magazines. I am talking about online new media ventures. You don’t need a lot of ad revenue when it is just one or two editors running sometihng online. You speak to your niche, get a little bit of money from your niche advertizers, and everyone is happy.
And I haven’t ever gotten a useful bit of information from Lucky. Now Shop Etc. on the other hand I like.
[...] Julie had a lot to say about my last post, most notably that I’m her “super favorite blogger” (hear that the Manolo?) It looks like I’m a few Brooks Brothers threads away from winning the hearts and minds of the fashion blogging intelligentsia. [...]
hil references Kathleen’s discussion of “push� manufacturing which focus on branding and image to create demand. But I would say that fashion editors participate even more actively in branding and image pushing than even the best marketing director of a fashion house.
The term “Push” is used in two ways. Most people associate the word with some form of in-your-face consumer marketing. When I use push, I mean it in a way that is used in manufacturing; and it’s not tied to marketing -it refers to a model of manufacturing. On the manufacturing side of fashion, when we say “push manufacturing” we mean that the product is designed, produced and then sold.
A more responsible form of manufacturing is known as “pull”. This means that the product is designed, pre-sold and then produced based on the orders sold. Now, I can understand it’s easy to confuse push in manufacturing with push in marketing because -even worse- push manufacturers must also engage in push marketing. Still worse, the costs and planning of their lines must include a lot of room for mark downs as it’s typical for goods to land in the store floor with 40% off tags already in place. Also, the timelines for push manufacturers are typically a year in advance of season so it’s hard for them to produce items they forecast people will want.
The push manufacturing process is very wasteful. I also think it unkind. Push manufacturers -in order to get their margins- produce in off-shore facilities where worker abuses are rife. I can’t be party to that. That’s why I focus on nurturing emerging designers who manufacture responsibly and domestically. We call it “pull” or “lean” manufacturing.
Thanks for the mention. I wish more people cared.
[...] Ad Age writer Simon Dumenco is saying exactly what I said last week Denim, The Fashion Mafia, and Customer Demand [...]
[...] While I have written on the subject before in Denim, The Fashion Mafia, and Customer Demand as a response to Millionaire Socialite’s Premium Denim Brands: Is Denim Post Branding post, I think that Omiru hits on a different aspect of the branding dilemma. [...]
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[...] My basic editorial philosphy? I have talked before about the untapped synergies between editorial and advertising and I plan to put them into effect on Out2’s fashion pages. Because things are local and targeted I can do that to an even great degree. Content, consumer, and marketer will meet and flourish if I can pull this off. [...]
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Denim often conveys an individual’s sexuality, personality and financial means in one undisguised visualization called Fashion. For the balance of the population jeans are utilitarian and usually a cost vs fit expenditure. If SEX, POWER and MONEY motivate us towards excellence then physical appearance and status provide incentive to look as good as possible in those perfect blue jeans. They are a continuation of the physical body beneath often worn 12 to 16 hours a day/ 7 days a week. If ILoveBlueJeans.com was your website what would you want it to offer in denim news? Interested in suggestions.
Editorial has the freedom to explore a range of options to best support the kind of vision their readership desires. But there is no reason that both marketing and editorial can’t find a better balance.