Sex Sells. But at what price?

Recently, I have been giving a lot of thought to the brand image Anonymous Co. should portray and how we should go about our new AW15 marketing campaign. Many successful brands these days, particularly the well-established ones, seem to follow the ‘sex sells’ mantra for advertising. Advertising expert Paul Suggett takes this a step further and states that “the industry, while abusing it more and more, would be foolish to ignore the draw of sexual and erotic messaging”. And it seems that there are many experts who concur with him. Having been in the fashion retail industry from the get-go, I have been well aware of this so-called universal truth, however, in my opinion it’s an unfortunate truth.

During my first season as a buyer for Diesel India, one of the campaigns that was heavily being promoted for the End of Season Sale was ‘The Diesel Orgy’. The campaign created a lot of controversy and yet no heed was paid to any requests regarding the discontinuation of the campaign. It escalated to a point where some members of a local ruling party paid a visit to the flagship store in Mumbai and threatened the store manager to get rid of the banner. It was later discovered that this event was triggered by a complaint from a parent whose child was attending the school which was right across the street from the flagship store. While I in no way agree with or promote the aggression that was used by the party workers to put the point across, I do understand why any parent and community would be in uproar. Are we really comfortable with promoting sexual imagery and slogans to children between the ages of 6-16? Is an advertising campaign more important than the upbringing of the generations to come?

While some brands such as Diesel use sex in advertising as a one-off campaign strategy or for short-term advertising, other brands use it as a core property of their brand. The most well-known example of this is Victoria’s Secret. While I am fan of their products and envious about the strong brand presence and loyal customer base they have (hopefully Anonymous Co. will get there one day!), I find their overtly sexual brand presence inappropriate. By using provocative images of beautiful women (with bodies that are not attainable by all women) for the brand visuals, Victoria’s Secret is representing the female gender in a way that implies: 1) Women will feel more confident about themselves when they look and feel sexy like the models in the advertisements. 2) The opposite sex will find you more attractive when you exude more sex appeal like the thin, long legged and cleavage baring models on the billboards. No doubt that this a great tool to increase brand and product visibility, but it also doubles up as a weapon that creates unrealistic expectations among impressionable teenagers and young adults. There are far too many girls and women who suffer from negative body image issues and eating disorders, and such marketing campaigns seem to add more fuel to the fire. It may seem like my perspective is somewhat prudish, but to clarify, the issue here is not the idea of being sexy or sex itself, but the intent and the message it sends when being used as a marketing tool.

I appreciate that successful brands have worked hard to create their empire, but I certainly have less respect for the ones that make use of sexual innuendo to promote their product and/or brand. As the co-owner of an upcoming high street fashion brand, I do not see “sex sells” being our advertising mantra for the foreseeable future - We want to create a more deep-rooted culture focused on women embracing their own style and beauty.

P.S. It was appeasing to find others who share a similar view to mine. There is an insightful article by Madeline Wahl on huffingtonpost.com that is definitely worth a read!

Online Marketing For Fashion E-Commerce: Permanent, Precise and Personal

A year and a half ago, my business partner and I launched the e-commerce website www.anonymousco.com in India - The portal is currently focused on pocket-friendly women's fashion apparel and accessories. Given the nature of our business, an online marketing presence is extremely vital for us to reach out our target audience. Not only do we want our target audience Pan-India to be aware of our brand and website, we also intend on expanding globally in the near future.

Based on my research and observations, there are three main reasons online marketing trumps print media in my view: 1) It is permanent as it leaves a digital footprint, 2) It has a global reach, which makes it more scalable and 3) It is more cost effective than print media, thus justifying the costs from a start-up perspective. Keeping this in mind, the online marketing mix for my e-commerce business consists of the following digital marketing and social media marketing tools: SEO, Google Ads, Advertising on Third Party Fashion Blogs, E-mailers, Facebook Page Content & Facebook Ads, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. It is interesting to analyse and compare how each of these marketing tools are so vastly different in terms of reach, demographic, organic growth and conversion rates. There was and still is a lot of trial and error going on in a attempt to find the 'perfect' marketing mix. Only recently did I realise that it can never really be perfect, because the marketing strategy has to be tweaked ever so often to ensure that it keeps up with the evolving brand and consumer. After a year of some good marketing decisions and even more costly mistakes, here are some of the key findings based off the monthly reports for my portal:

1) Do not skimp on your Google Ads budget - I learnt this the hard way! It has the largest reach when compared to all the other marketing tools, this was of course expected since it's Google and everyone who has internet access can view Google Ads that are being targeted towards them. If you have a great product, visually appealing ads and have refined the set of  keywords being used to market your brand/product, Google Ads is a sure shot way of getting more eyeballs on your website that result in sales. Make sure you carve out a major chunk of your marketing budgeting for this, because it definitely helps give you the initial push and momentum in terms of visibility and sales. Google Ads helps in getting that much closer to reaching those sometimes impossible sales targets.

2) Instagram has shown us the highest % of growth in terms of monthly increase in followers - And it has been purely organic growth. The visual content has really helped to keep our followers engaged and increase visibility. For a business that lacks the element of touch and feel while shopping (which is still a significant drawback in India for the e-tail women's fashion segment), Instagram is a great marketing tool to help potential buyers familiarise themselves and feel more comfortable about the brand/products. All the daily visual content adds a personal touch and makes the brand seem more like a real person.

3) Fashion Blogs thrive on their loyal readers, which is why tying up with third party bloggers has been quite successful. Due to the loyalty factor and readers trusting the sensibilities and tastes of the blogger, featured posts and contests on fashion blogs not only helped us to reach out to our target market more effectively but also to create a level of trust with potential buyers. Hosting contests on a blog also allowed us to get a better idea about how active the readership is and whether it is worth investing in a long term advertisement on the blog.

4) We made the mistake of  putting more than required towards our Facebook marketing budget. The reason I say it's a mistake is because unlike social media tools such as Instagram and Twitter which allow for optimised targeted marketing through hashtags and location, Facebook does not. While the paid ads were successful at getting us more page likes, many of the 'likers' did not fit our target consumer profile (even though we set very specific filters for the ads) and as expected did show a significant increase in website traffic. That being said, we do have a Facebook page where we upload brand and product related content on a daily basis. It's important for brand visibility...The more page likes, the more likely it is that a potential shopper will trust the brand and the product. Not having a Facebook page is as good as telling a potential shopper that your brand does not exist or you do not care enough about it. For a small business, I would recommend dedicating only 10% of your marketing budget to Facebook.

I'm still discovering and learning along the way through the struggles and successes of my start-up, and will keep sharing my findings, observations and experiences - So that you too can learn and grow with me if this is an area of interest to you!