The emergence of social media platforms in the early 2000s has been utilized by fashion brands to promote their products through the use of company-made and influencer-created messages, and share their name beyond advertising.Platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube have allowed fashion brands to engage with consumers, often younger than the traditional target market.
TikTok
Luxury brands have turned to TikTok to engage younger audiences. During Milan Fashion Week of February 2020, designer brand, Prada, collaborated with the TikTok influencer, Charli D’Amelio, and the video reached 36.8 million views. Later that year in September, TikTok launched its own fashion month and invited users to join by sharing content under hashtags #TikTokFashionMonth, #GetTheLook, and #Fashion101. New York Fashion Week’s hashtags on TikTok were the most watched for the Fall 2020 fashion season, reaching 15.3 million visualizations and engaging 2.9 million users.
With the 2010 launch of Instagram, the app since then has gained over millions of followers. Instagram is now considered to be one of the most powerful tools in shaping the way consumers perceive brands. 81% of Instagram users use the platform to research products and services and 50% of users have visited a website to make a purchase after seeing a product or a service.
Instagram has incorporated a “Shop” feature on the app; this feature presents the same design and layout as the content from followers, but when pictures are viewed, a marketplace window opens up as if you were shopping for the item on a website. The Shop feature makes content suggestions based on the users’ data such as likes and following. Instagram users can comment on posted items and provide feedback and reviews of the product as well as rate their purchase. The posted items are associated with a brand, and this is linked to the brand’s Instagram page.With over 200 million active users, access to creative content is virtually unlimited. Many fashion-forward Instagram accounts with large followings are able to turn their passions into businesses, generating income using their status within the community.
The introduction of the Facebook Pages allows brands to create a Facebook profile for their brand and promote their name. This allowed for consumers to like, follow, and interact with the company page. The company would then post feed that would be received by consumers in their recent posts. Visual media interactions on social media platforms such as Facebook has been successful with the distribution of fashion media. Interactions can take place between the brand and consumer, through advertisements, sharing behind the scenes content and commenting on profiles.
Consumers can comment on brand’s posts, post pictures in the product, click links, like, and share the page with their own network. Fashion brands utilize Facebook to further connect with their consumers and provide more incentives to shop through special deals in addition to creating brand trust through giving insight on Facebook posts.
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