In 2009, the impact of bloggers and social media reached its tipping point for New York Fashion Week. The years that followed have brought a new wave of deeply-integrated marketing strategies surrounding the events of NYFW to build brand awareness and drive consumer engagement.

Spilling over from fashion brands and retailers, lifestyle partners that fall into the beauty and interior design categories are now embracing all things social and digital when marketing during one of the most important semi-annual events in the U.S.

A great example of a beauty brand leveraging integrative marketing for A/W 2012 is the partnership between Creative Nail Design and Red Door Interactive. Red Door Interactive launched a multifaceted social media campaign for Creative Nail Design (CND) coinciding with CND’s 15th anniversary at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York. Continue Reading

We, the women of FMM, have been on the hunt for articles and material that will simply knock our readers’ socks off. Recently, we delved deep into the topic of Facebook for fashion and beauty brands, and now we’re falling down the rabbit hole on the topic of community and blogger brand relationships.

In our discoveries, we consistently come back to one brand and one anonymous personality that is driving the fashion brand’s approach to their social media strategies — and that’s DKNY PR GIRL. Part inspiration, part aspiration and part “I’m a woman who runs New York and social media,” DKNY PR GIRL is a force to be reckoned with.

We will be honest, we’ve never been big fans of the PR or marketing department running social media; we firmly believe social is its own department.  However, we’ve also always agreed there are exceptions, and DKNY PR GIRL illustrates the perfect example.

We simply couldn’t figure out how to encapsulate how this woman is the exception to every rule and how she just gets it. We decided to have her tell us in her own words how she manages marketing, PR and social media with such grace, style and poise. Continue Reading

Disruption, Innovation, Collaboration, Social Business, Enterprise 2.0…all of these terms are associated with the ways in which brands are coming terms when developing new e-commerce models. To gain insight, cut through the jargon and find out the true impact of digital commerce on retail, we turned to L2 Think Tank’s summit on Commerce: E, F and M held last month in New York.

James Edis, a professor at NYU Stern and the VP, Emerging Technologies Group at HBO, shared his insights on how social and digital trends are impacting, and disrupting, eCommerce for prestige, luxury brands. Here are nine ways statistics that may surprise you that are vital to luxury brand’s success in the online space.

• It takes 93 percent of specialty retailers over three days to ship new orders. Over 50 percent take more than five (5) days to credit returns. Bluefly takes three weeks, which may be a sign of financial trouble.
• Retailers think that on-site search, online promotions and website utility are most important things to consumers. That’s not true, consumers care about transparency in inventory, tracking order progress and they also want in-store pickup options. Nordstrom, Coach, Blue Nile and Zara are offering showrooms and in-store pick up options, an extremely complex process to achieve successfully.
• Frightening Mobile Stats: One in ten people have their phone within reach of the shower; 33 percent of millennials have their phone next to their bed and check Facebook and email before they get out of bed. Mobile and m-commerce are progressing so rapidly that retailers struggle to catch up, mobile is going from $0 to $50 billion in the next 36 months. Amazon holds 37 percent of the market share.

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