Social Media

Fashion Folk Turn to Tumblr

Got a brand? Get on Tumblr. That’s the news coming through loud and clear from Folk as Tumblr is supposedly on the cusp of doing something quite incredible. Analysts claim those greedy for web hits should get themselves on the blogging platform sharp as Google searches mentioning the service are poised to surpass those for ‘blog’ by the end of the year, proving that the New York-based company has well and truly established itself as the Web’s next big cheese.

According to The Next Web ( who have reported on this colossal invasion and provided this handy little graph) “Google search numbers are not an exact statistic, but the content of searches does indicate the popularity and interest in services, people and topics online. While it’s true to say that a great many blog readers go straight to sites via Twitter, RSS feeds, emails and other links, Tumblr’s continued rise is massively significant.

If you are a business or individual with a blog that you want to be found online, then running it, or another, on Tumblr is likely to bring you more traffic.

The business world has been largely unsure of how to cater for Tumblr — which is shareable and fast-paced as Twitter but populated with more inspiring text and rich images — and this is likely to be a wake-up call for them.”

Folk – who continue to launch, design and manage the websites and social strategies of numerous luxury brands within the industry – has noticed that the world of fashion developing a major crush on Tumblr over the past few years.

Bloggers, designers and brands are all flocking to the micro-blogging site to showcase their identities in creative, colourful and personal ways.

In turn the industry is a serious business for the site – highlighted by it’s recent appointment of seasoned fashion journalist Valentine Uhovski, who has just been named “Fashion Evangelist” at Tumblr (seriously, that’s his official title).

Of course, some brands are much better at it than others. After claiming four of the eight awards at last year’s Fashion 2.0 Awards, DKNY was once again showing other brands how it should be done by winning the Best Twitter and Best Blog by a Fashion Brand at this years ceremony.

DKNY’s Twitter account and Tumblr blog (dknyprgirl) are entertaining, informative and exceptionally on-brand. The Twitter account features, among other things, live blogs and frequently engages in conversations with followers of all stripes. Meanwhile, the brand’s Tumblr has become a go-to resource for humor-laced PR advice and inspiring imagery.

Brands such as this understand and demonstrate that the goal of social media marketing is to offer content in a variety of ways so a broad audience can pick and choose how they want to consume your content and interact with your brand.

Not everyone likes Tumblr, and not everyone likes Facebook, brand websites, Instagram or Pinterest.

Your goal is to create content targeted to the audiences that frequent each destinations or focus on the site frequented by your target audience in order to achieve maximum brand awareness, word-of-mouth marketing, and prospective business growth.

If you haven’t familiarised yourself – and more importantly your brand – with this new social super power, just don’t say we didn’t warn you.

The Future of Digital Fashion Today

Fashion is finally falling head-over-heels for digital if the latest event from Westfield’s is anything to go by. The London shopping centre launched the first ever all-digital fashion event of its kind this week, with the intention of demonstrating what future shopping will be like and to showcase forward thinking fashion technology.

The Future Fashion event is running until April 1, allowing shoppers to use digital touch screens, QR codes and NFC to browse more than 500 spring 2012 products from retailers including Reiss, Dune, House of Fraser, Vero Moda, Accessorize and Calvin Klein Jeans.

Along with a cinema-style 3D catwalk, social photo-booths allowing shoppers to send their snaps straight to Facebook and Tweetable mirror images to show off their style, customers can also shop till their cards ignite on the stores huge digital shopping screens.

With the event being held at both Westfield London and Westfield Stratford City over the coming weeks, some retailers have already hailed the launch “ahead of its time” and “the perfect example of how bricks and mortar stores can embrace innovative technology”.

Folk at the Fashion & Beauty Summit

As a digital agency who craft stories for luxury fashion and beauty brands, it made sense that Folk attend and talk about the current buzz subjects within digital at the first Fashion and Beauty Summit. We chose to focus on the four social platforms that are really helping brands in this sector tell their stories: twittertumblrpinterest and instagram

Here is a copy of the presentation – it’s pretty visual and might not make much sense without Paul’s narrative … but it’s worth a look and offers a snapshop of some interesting things brands are doing right now.

Enjoy!

London Fashion Week Live

As the fashion world descends on London, and with many of our clients showing at the event, we at Folk have been taking a closer look at the explosion of digital during London Fashion Week. The main feature of next week’s event has to be the record number of shows being streamed live as the British Fashion Council expands its digital schedule.

A total of 44 designer collections will be watched live, with 22 shows being shown at the Courtyard Show Space at Somerset House, 12 from the Embankment Galleries Show Space, eight from Topshop’s venue at 1 Old Billingsgate Walk plus shows from around the city including Burberry Prorsum and Roksanda Ilincic.

It appears the fashion world, and particularly the newly innovative BFC, have realised the potential that digital can offer such an illustrious event. By streaming these shows live online at www.londonfashionweek.co.uk/live brands allow customers and fans a chance to watch and, more crucially, buy from the catwalk without having to visit the capital.

Of course one of the most interactive, accessible and influential marriages between fashion and digital has come about thanks to the domination of Twitter, Tumblr and the notorious style bloggers.

Editors, celebrities, bloggers and designers will all be posting snaps of their favorite pieces as models sashay past them on the runway, meaning any fashion fanatic can buy into the latest trend before the glossies have even hit the newsstands.

To capitalise on this online infatuation, the BFC are also working closely with Twitter during the shows. Question and answer sessions will be held over the six days with guests including designers Anya Hindmarch and Alice Temperley and Dylan Jones, editor of GQ and chair of the Fashion 2012 Menswear Committee.

There’s no doubt that digital will continue to dominate the world of  fashion in 2012, the only question remains who will be best in the online show?