Radar: Fashion Alert, Brands discover how to harness digital exposure
Although ads still grace the pages of Vogue, the power of online is ever-growing and changing the way brands market themselves. Even though it’s hard to miss a page without a banner ad running along the sides, do you ever click on them? Instead of investing money in poorly-placed ad space, brands are enhancing their presence by expanding their dialogue with the online community by using blogs, interactive web sites and building social networking sites. Instead of relying on fashion web sites to market their brand, they’re editorializing their own content to get their name out by publishing news, press releases and product images on their web site.
Tim Calkins, clinical professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University told WWD, “In a sense, it’s a scary change, and it also opens up enormous opportunities. It gives marketers a chance to interact with the consumer on a deeper level. There’s a new level of communication and involvement.” WWD noted in a study by the Society of Digital Agencies that investment in digital is steadily growing. Over 75 percent of the brands studied anticipated a larger budget for digital in 2010. Also, half of them were taking money out of traditional ad budgets and re-focusing them onto the web. WWD reports, “For the first time, digital spending is expected to eclipse print ad spending this year, according to an Outsell Inc. study of 1,008 advertisers.”
This is yet another reason why digital is becoming more and more relevant in terms of editorial and relaying product. More people go to the web for news updates, social networking and business than ever before. An investment in the internet, means money in minutes rather than the months it takes to run a magazine.
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