The Power of Storytelling in Fashion Content Marketing
Fashion brands should be all too familiar with the get ready with me video, a cornerstone of digital marketing. Often featuring stylish fashion and trendy makeup, GRWM videos are powerful storytellers in the fashion marketing industry. Whether the video was created by A-list celebrities for Vogue or by everyday people for user-generated content, get ready with me videos are everywhere because they boost trust, brand loyalty, and sales.
Getting ready for the day is the most relatable story there is, and seeing fashionable items on influential people draws viewers in. Storytelling fosters relatability, admiration, and a vision of how fashion might fit into the everyday consumer’s life.
Understanding Storytelling in Fashion Content Marketing
Storytelling in fashion content marketing uses a narrative to promote reliability and trust between the brand and the consumer. Advertisements often tell a story, appealing to emotion, relatability, environmental impact, culture, social class, and more. Content marketing strategies may vary from brand to brand, but storytelling helps every brand communicate with a target audience.
Stories create emotional connections and make brands more relatable and memorable. That is why user-generated content is more popular than ever. These users seem like everyday people, and by integrating fashion content into a relatable storytime or lifestyle video, they easily form a connection with viewers.
Elements of Effective Fashion Storytelling
Effective fashion storytelling has elements of conflict, resolution, characters, stories, and some variety of authority, emotion, or logic (ethos, pathos, or logos). These elements help people relate to an otherwise amorphous brand.
Now, imagine your favorite influencer is a new parent, and they are talking about the struggles of recovery after birth. They recommend a pair of pants from X brand by saying that they are the most comfortable for postpartum recovery. Any viewers going through a similar struggle would be inclined to try that product over others. For influencers, their life is the story, and their openness fosters trust in the products they recommend.
Always remember that not just any story will be effective for you; people are bombarded by media and ads every day. You must build authenticity in the stories you tell with a depth of character, realism, and a strong concept to capture the attention of audiences and evoke true emotion. That will build the trust you need for audiences to look past the advertisement and decide that taking action is worthwhile.
Types of Stories Fashion Brands Can Tell
Brands should look toward their strengths when considering stories to tell. Brand origin stories are important to consider when constructing a marketing plan. Consider your product, your ideal demographic, and what stories they would care about. For example, a workwear brand like Carhartt would benefit from telling stories that appeal to the outdoors person or a blue-collar worker. But not all stories you tell should hark on your brand’s origins.
Customer stories are amazing for brands new and old. Audiences are smart enough in this day and age to question a brand’s intentions, but real-life customer stories are more believable. Positive ratings, customer satisfaction, and relatable stories should be integrated authentically. Show real customer satisfaction, don’t just tell audiences that your product is satisfying.
To add a taste of authenticity to your fashion marketing plan, remember to bring customers along for the ride with behind-the-scenes features. These stories bring potentially flat brands or stories to life with insights into the designers, production processes, models, lifestyle, and more.
Case Studies of Successful Storytelling in Fashion
Patagonia is a brand that successfully meets its target audience and builds trust. As a well-known outdoor clothing brand, Patagonia knows that their audience spends time in nature — or wishes they would. With nature and the great outdoors in focus, many of Patagonia’s storytelling centers around environmental activism.
While a fashion brand, their website emphasizes activism, while supporting pathways to sustainability. This consistency in their marketing shows Patagonia’s brand purpose and builds trust with their vast audience. Even those who don’t explore the outdoors may be tempted to purchase from a brand so centered in activism. Sticking to their roots works to Patagonia’s favor.
Another example of a brand with a compelling story is TOMS Shoes.TOMS uses a one-for-one giving model where they give away one pair of shoes for every pair purchased. This model goes beyond advertising the product, it advertises the action of buying with a positive outcome.
By supporting health, education, and community members, TOMS uses its brand story to do good. Their website claims they’ve made a positive impact on 105 million lives, and that one third of their profits go to doing good. By telling a story of positive social impact that customers can participate in, customers feel encouraged to buy — and they will feel good about doing it.
Implementing Storytelling in Your Fashion Content Strategy
To nail your fashion content strategy, discover and define the unique story of your brand. Are you a high fashion brand whose story appeals to those who can indulge in the finer things? Often luxury brands use popular faces to relate to wider audiences. Or maybe your brand story would best be portrayed with a story that can appeal to those with or without money.
To learn from this example, let's look at CUUP’s marketing strategy. From the beginning, CUUP’s marketing strategy appealed to those who struggle with finding the proper fitting bra that is sleek and functional. Their product offers a wide range of sizes and appealing designs that are advertised to be for all body types. Despite a steep price point, CUUP is the solution to many women’s struggles. Implementing that message across their content strategy creates consistency, and it is solidified when corroborated by happy customers.
No matter what, your brand’s story must integrate across social media, email campaigns, website content, and more. Use a content planner to plan videos, product launches, and advertisements around your story. To build authenticity and trust with your community, you must first be authentically you.
Conclusion
A brand’s marketing and content strategy is only as strong as their purpose, story, and ability to persuade. Storytelling must be the leading strategy behind social media posts, email marketing, ad campaigns, and beyond. Whether your brand chooses to build a trustworthy, environmentally friendly, problem-solving, luxurious, or exciting content strategy, a story will bring these qualities to life. Not every technique will work for every brand, but audiences WILL respond to relevant stories.
Get to know your fashion brand’s story and what makes it exciting! If you already have a content marketing strategy, consider how intentional or unintentional storytelling effects it. How can a convincing story improve it? Find out what your fashion brand and your audience have in common, and tell your story strategically to bring them both together.
Additional Resources
Further Reading
There is much to learn about storytelling, as this article only covers the basics. Here some resources to expand your knowledge on storytelling in marketing. Building a StoryBrand is a book that helps readers connect with their customers. From Hubspot, here is an article about their storytelling framework for building effective narratives.
Tools and Templates:
Here are some templates and content planning tools to help structure your brand’s path forward. Charlene & Co Media’s Content Strategy Planner is great for building a strong foundation and fostering consistency for your content strategy. If you need some additional help creating your marketing plan, Hubspot offers a free marketing plan template.
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