Moving Above the Fashion Cycle: Exploring Brand Influence
For apparel and lifestyle brands, the curse of the category is how rapidly brands move in and out of fashion. In order to get above this cycle, a premium footwear and apparel brand identified the need to look beyond immediate retail trends and to explore the wider cultural context. They wanted to understand the underlying factors and forces that could come to impact their brand and their audience around the world.
THE ANGLE
The critical audience for this work was the global subculture of fashion leaders and influencers. Recruitment was a painstaking process but the key to our success; we found these influencers through connections, PR networks, social media, and local insiders in each market.
We targeted creators with extended individual ethnographic work, and then staged high-energy brand workshops with industry leaders, activists, writers and innovators. The work moved across seven countries in total, from backstreet workshops to boutique hotels, from gritty warehouses to iconic fashion retailers.
The marketing and product groups were all deeply immersed in this work, traveling with the VF team and joining segment panels, product ideation workshops, and feedback sessions.
THE IMPACT
This work broke new ground inside the organization, and has created new conversations and channels for brand, product, and marketing teams. The initiative received board level exposure, and is now held up as a model for how to understand new markets, and inspire innovation.
Fashion is fickle, yet this brand has been able to adapt to different tastes and maintain its authenticity. The Vital Findings Team and brand insights leadership are sharing reflections from this approach at the Corporate Researchers Conference in 2024.