If you haven’t already read the first part to this, I’d recommend having a look at it because it is brilliant. I had started to look at the themes that had arisen during the content analysis of fashion brands use of fashion film on Instagram Stories and these are the remaining themes.

Theme 2

Fetishisation of product

To really get across how important the product is Dior stood head and shoulders above the rest with luxurious shots of bags, jewellery and dresses all with very high production values allowing details to reveal themselves to the us (look at this one). This places the object just behind the mediation of the screen in crisp detail, often taking us on the journey from hand drawn design, through hand crafting, to a finished piece which has been presented through it’s close up details. Pulling the pieces into such close focus forces us to pore over the effort that has gone into them, as well as making them seem so beautiful, elevating it to a piece of desire.
The high street brands do not have the luxury of such a long lead time or the budget to make films with such high production values but there is still an opportunity through stories to show details that could be missed on a feed. Getting across the idea of fabric quality, stitch detail and any branded fixings can elevate the product to something that we should care about more and in light of the industries responsibility to change our perception of clothes from throwaway pieces to something more sustainable, this is an approach that others could take.
Clearly not all brands have such a long lead time and do not employ craftsmen to work with precious metal and stones but time should be given to focussing on the details of clothes.

Theme 3

Supporting brand ideology

There are brands who have a very clear sense of brand identity and what their values are, the luxury sector are very successful at communicating them but what was clear from this study is that there are good examples of brand values clearly communicated at all levels: asos, New Look, River Island and George are promoting diversity, Umbro have a very clear football focus, Converse and Dr Martens take an alternative approach with musical leanings, adidas push a very strong visual identity with sports success and music high in their offering and Stella McCartney has a very clear focus on sustainability. It should be noted that Dr Martens were one of the only brands that created little films especially for stories rather than repurposed some other content. This made a difference to how it came across and really cemented the brand values through the posts.

All the videos that supported these values clearly, added to the overall brand equity and the clearer the message, the easier it is for customers to engage with and feel part of the brand, This will hopefully manifest itself in customers sharing images and videos of themselves in the clothes allowing for brand advocacy, something that Ramaswamy highlights as integral to the creation of value for brands.

Theme 4

Showing the process

This is an area that luxury brands should thrive in as head offices in the luxury sector are often driven by brand values of opulence and luxury. The Dior films have some behind the scenes footage which show exceptionally well maintained spaces, with the craftspeople shown in very crisp white lab coats. The experience of working as a supplier to the UK high Street though, is a very different experience which may look as polished. However George have a great space to tease their sneak peak at the new collection which could be replicated by others and asos use their head office extensively in their stories giving the customer great access to the feeling of the head office environment which mirrors the brand experience.

Giving access to some behind the scenes of the brand gives the customer an opportunity to feel part of the process whether that is the design, development, production or promotion - JW Anderson, Zara and Hermes giving exclusive access to new exhibitions through Stories, although Zara’s production values here outshine the luxury versions.

Utilising all these elements in Stories could prove beneficial for a brand - what Dior offers is a more complete view of the brand from behind the scenes detail of the design and production process, the physical environment, the actors within that space and the fetishised final pieces. Whilst high street brands cannot show the level of detail that makes up a production garment in the same way, focussing on the detail of the work may add to the value that customers assign to the pieces.

So this part of the research proved to be beneficial to set a benchmark for what brands are currently doing but I wanted to test how useful they were to increase brand equity by conducting focus groups with customers of two brands that had stood out in the content analysis that sat outside the luxury sector: Dr Martens and adidas

I've been interested in fashion film as a way to promote brands having worked with start-ups who achieved successful responses to their films and used my Masters thesis to explore fashion films on Instagram Stories. The research was split into two parts; the first looking at what brands are posting and the second questioning the power of these films to influence customers who were not necessarily engaged on Instagram. I’m going to split the findings of both parts into four posts, so they aren’t too long.

I needed to find out if a range of brands across different fashion sectors, included film as part of their approach to stories which can give a less formal approach to posting on the channel. Who was posting video that disappeared and who left a trail of video content in their highlights, did any of these link through to specific landing pages to help track the customer journey or through to longer videos on IGTV allowing for a more immersive film experience and what content stood out in the sea of film? Did any brand make content in the right orientation for the platform or was it all repurposed from somewhere else?

It was also necessary to look at these posts through the lens of fashion film. Consensus on what defines fashion film isn't complete but Díaz Soloaga, P. & García Guerrero, L. (2016) framed it around brands and branded content recognising the importance they play in brand equity calling it the "heir of audiovisual advertisements, film, short films, video clips and video art." Exploring if fashion brands were taking the opportunity to create 15 second versions of fashion film (like these from apple) could prove interesting.

Before diving further in, there is a caveat to this part of the research - to be able to work with a succinct representation of these posts, I only selected the first four stories from accounts that actively posted, this ranged from a live story and three highlights with stills and text alongside video, to brands that hadn't utilised highlights at all or had any stories live on those days.  So although it wasn’t a longitudinal approach (like this from Union Metrics), it was enough to get an idea of what brands were doing through this channel and reflects how IG users check out a brand’s profile to see if they’ll follow them. In the end this resulted in watching 102 stories from 34 brands varying in length from 15 seconds to around 10 minutes.

Anyone who has spent any time looking at fashion content on Stories will tell you there is a huge spectrum of approaches, including a variety of techniques to engage customers and a lot that is i forgettable. This is a great article on different approaches brands have taken and ideas to try out. Suffice to say that not all brands create great, engaging content but there is no need to dwell on the less effective posts some of which came from surprising quarters.

There was one brand I didn’t include in the analysis who deserve a separate mention. Coach have really nailed their use of stories and the majority of the themes that arose from the analysis (more of which below) can can be seen in their highlights, the only thing that doesn’t flow is their links to specific product pages to make the customer journey more complete (adidas are great at this, reflecting their overall digital strategy) but their rise in success suggests that it’s the content that followers are drawn to.

I broke down the stories into four themes that emerged, these were not all present on all accounts but they tended to appear across sectors from luxury to value so let’s look at them. The first one I will look at on this post and the remainder on a follow up post

Theme 1: Use a celebrity or influencer

81% of the brands used an influencer or celebrity in their stories. There is no doubt that both parties can benefit from this type of relationship and what became clear later in the research is that messages that came directly from brands were helped by a familiar face. Influencer spend is on the rise here and here so appealing to your audience through the “authentic” voice of an individual makes for a stronger campaign. Djafarova and Rushworth (2014) highlight this through Source Credibility Theory “where reviews or statements regarding products and services are perceived as valid on Instagram, consumers develop a positive attitude towards the brand being endorsed.”
There are so many more examples of the success of influencer marketing and the reasons behind that success such as parasocial interaction (see Gong and Li’s paper from 2017) and looking at the WeChat model (BOF) and (BOF) customers are definitely responsive to a familiar face, happy to spend money on product endorsed by the right personality with the right level of following. Interestingly Jiao et al. (2017) found that Western audiences responded more positively to marketer generated content in a social media brand community setting but Eastern audiences preferred user generated content. This study suggested that there would be a difference to the SMBC based on the platform and this is really important when addressing your audience. Where are they and what do they want to do on that platform? Looking at the platform itself is a good indicator and the features that are available - SMBCs work differently on each platform due to the different features but both Snapchat and YouTube (highlighted as the most popular networks in this study from Pew) rely on influencers to drive marketing efforts suggesting that the cultural differentiations may be less influential than the platform and the relevance of the content whether pushed out by brands or influencers. The take home message is that influencers and celebrities can be used really effectively especially if they are adding a different tone of voice to the brand on the platform.

I'll be adding the next section of themes over the next week, so connect with me on LinkedIn and you can find out when it's ready.