Head Fashion Bloggers Are Encountering A "Trust Crisis". Small Bloggers Are Starting To Rise.

Fashion blogger marketing has become one of the most frequent and effective means of luxury fashion marketing and promotion. But there are signs that more and more brands are choosing to cooperate with smaller bloggers with fewer fans.

According to Glossy's latest report, the credibility of large volume fans and fashion bloggers is decreasing. Although street brands still advocate fashion influencer marketing, consumers no longer pay for it. Juliette Leavey, director of digital strategy at Deutsch New York division, an integrated advertising agency, points out that brands need to redefine fashion bloggers to see who really affects consumers. A year ago, influential bloggers are likely to lose credibility because of too many fans.

Juliette Leavey said she is encouraging the brand to dig deeper into the small bloggers who love the brand. Compared with the times when minority opinion leaders hold most of the right to speak, nowadays, the vigorous development of social media has led to different opinion leaders in different vertical fields, which has led to the weakening of opinion leaders.

Over the past year, many people have noticed that young people are tired of the highly homogenized content of fashion bloggers. In 2017, the "Happy Place" of the Instagram Museum, which was widely opened in Losangeles, met with cold reception when traveling to Boston. The brightly colored walls, the swinging latte, the avocado toast, the most popular pink items of the millennial generation, these popular "Instagram style" photos are no longer loved by the younger generation, but are replaced by real and even some rough pictures.

This shows that the preferences of young users on social networks are gradually shifting to more authentic styles. More and more bloggers are starting to abandon photos of SLR shots and computer refinement, and begin to share the experience of empty bottles with their original pictures, and share their daily lives in social media, which makes them seem more approachable. The big bloggers, who were born with beautiful photos, lost their credibility with fans because of their lack of authenticity.

On the other hand, cooperation with large fashion bloggers also has higher risks. Specifically, when the brand is working with one or more large traffic bloggers, if the other party fails to perform according to the cooperative plan, it will cause huge losses and negative effects to the brand. According to the fashion business bulletin, Luka Sabbat, a fashion blogger with 1 million 470 thousand fans on Instagram, was prosecuted by a PR company for failing to promote the contract, and the brand was caught in a dilemma after it acknowledged that it had refused to refund any fees after its breach.

In April this year, the Sarah Jessica Parker, the heroine of the American drama sex and the city, was accused of failing to effectively promote the products of jewellery brand Kat Florence after receiving millions of dollars in reward. American rappers, Jay Z, have been charged with $18 million for failing to promote their endorsement perfume brand Parfumania. The reality show star Kim Kardashian was also arrested on suspicion of undertaking but refused to promote the "the Kardashians Beauty" series of cosmetics. One point eight Million dollars in prosecution.

Similar cases are not uncommon, but often brands take into account images and choose to eat bitter fruit. If a brand is working with multiple small bloggers, when one of them breaks the contract, it can interrupt cooperation and maintain cooperation with other bloggers, thus greatly reducing the marketing risk.

Let alone mention the serious data fraud problem of domestic and foreign fashion bloggers. In January 19, 2018, the Daily Telegraph of Xinhua News Agency published an article entitled "chaos in the performing arts industry: the star who smashed money and brushed the hack of hacking money at a high price," revealing the star's behavior of raising the price and exchanging brand endorsements with the "brush flow".

In the same year, Unilever issued a statement that it would never cooperate with the Internet fan who bought fans. According to a survey on the influence of fashion bloggers released in August last year, some fashion bloggers accounted for more than 80% of zombie fans. With the expansion of social networks, the bubble of fashion bloggers is increasing. High flow fashion bloggers are encountering a "trust crisis".

Now, brand marketers are beginning to realize that the flow of fashion bloggers is not a measure of their business value, and the return on investment with small bloggers is very significant, which may reach the effect that can not be achieved with large traffic bloggers.

Sephora recently launched a new talent incubation project entitled "#SephoraSquad project". It has selected 24 previously unknown red nets and provided them with opportunities for peer and professional counselling, writing and social networking, as well as opportunities for product cooperation and early contact with products of SF. Content support.

This is not the first brand aimed at small bloggers. As early as 2016, Paris L'OREAL UK signed five beauty bloggers, forming "Beauty Squad". In 2017, it increased to eight people and launched long-term cooperation. Similarly, the selected beauty blogger is not the super traffic KOL on Instagram, but the opinion leaders from different subdivisions, such as skin care, beauty, hairdressing and other fields.

Compared with large traffic bloggers, the high adhesion between small bloggers and fans can bring higher ROI (ROI). Tribe Dynamics's survey of 15 new fashion bloggers showed that although the fans of these 15 respondents were below 300 thousand, most of them were below 200 thousand, but their interaction with fans was 4 times the average interaction rate of the bloggers. The adhesion between fans and fans is often higher than that of fans with more than 500 thousand fans.

In the past two years, the Copenhagen brand Ganni, which exploded in Instagram, stands out from the unique vision of fashion blogger marketing. Although cooperation with large traffic bloggers can bring more exposure to brands, the conversion rate and cost performance ratio are not necessarily higher than those of small bloggers. While fighting for heavy money to seek cooperation with large traffic bloggers, Ganni, who realized the importance of small bloggers, chose another way to excavate small bloggers who could bring high conversion rate.

The low risk, low cost, high ROI and high adhesion of small bloggers make it the focus of more brand marketing. The high cohesion between these bloggers and fans makes them establish a stronger sense of trust with their fans and increase the rate of return on investment.

Many brands have recognized changes in the aesthetic preferences of the younger generation and have made corresponding moves on their official social accounts. Most brands choose to publish UGC (User Generated Content) in official Instagram. These selected photos can be a self portrait on the road, a happy dinner photo, and a weird memorial at a music festival. The girls in the picture are not bloggers or celebrities with many fans, and they do not necessarily have high value and perfect figure, but have their own stories. This is true, allowing users to feel that no matter how your figure or complexion is, you can wear your clothes out of your own style.

Besides, some brands have tried other civilians. The Copenhagen brand Ganni mentioned above has a registered name. Ganni.Guide The Instagram account used to share restaurants, attractions and museums in Copenhagen has transformed into a genuine Copenhagen guide, which has also deepened the brand image of Copenhagen.

Similarly, with outstanding fashion blogger marketing strategy, niche REVOLVE has successfully occupied a place in today's increasingly competitive electricity supplier industry. In addition to the same launch of UGC, REVOLVE has built a strong online community, and has maintained a cooperative relationship with a large number of fashion bloggers. Each time, 10 or so bloggers are invited to go around the world to organize Party, which can weaken the sense of business and show a stronger sense of life, thus transmitting a way of life to the consumers and narrowing the distance between them.

After nearly 10 years of development iteration, the fashion blogger industry has been quite mature, with obvious stratification. According to the number of fans, fashion bloggers are usually divided into five categories: Mega-influencer, Macro-influencer, Mid-influencer, Micro-influencer and Nano-influencer, respectively, which have more than 1 million fans and 500 thousand to 1 million powder on Instagram. Silk, 50 thousand to 500 thousand fans, 10 thousand to 50 thousand fans and 1 thousand to 10 thousand fans.

Despite the fact that the number of fans and traffic of nanoscale bloggers is much lower than that of other bloggers, this is exactly what makes them more authentic and more precise, and most of the nano bloggers will know their fans better, so that their promotion can attract higher participation. Mini fashion bloggers are the most active bloggers in 2018.

According to Adweek analysis, micro bloggers are even the most important part of the marketing of fashion bloggers. Bloggers with a larger number of fans can attract the attention of consumers from more groups, but micro fashion bloggers have more specific subdivision areas, so marketers can develop more targeted marketing plans.

According to a survey conducted by eMarketer on cosmetics, fashion and luxury marketers, 46% of marketers thought that the promotion of mini fashion bloggers was most effective, followed by 34% of marketers that big fashion bloggers were the best candidates for brand marketing, while those who chose super fashion bloggers and celebrities were much less.

Mid sized fashion bloggers have broader coverage than micro bloggers and nanoscale bloggers, but are more approachable than big fashion bloggers and super fashion bloggers. A MarketingDive study shows that the recommendation of medium-sized fashion bloggers is more attractive and reliable than Mini fashion bloggers, large fashion bloggers and stars.

Large fashion bloggers represent the best balance between cost and coverage. Compared with other fashion bloggers at other levels, the return on investment of large fashion bloggers is most influential. Super fashion bloggers tend to be the choice of luxury brands with higher budget, because they can reach the greatest influence and the most extensive coverage, and save the time and manpower of brand management for fashion bloggers. Making use of the advantages of different levels of fashion bloggers to develop the most cost-effective marketing plan is the next challenge for marketers.

McKinsey's "China luxury report 2019" pointed out that after the official release of Gabrielle handbag by CHANEL, Yang Mi, the first star "Queen of goods", carried the bag on the WeChat public account of Mr. MrBags, a super fashion blogger. Then, by the well-known local bloggers, the top-level fashion can be easily and easily understood to create various kinds of photos, blogs and comments that consumers can easily understand. Finally, a long string of grass roots red is used to complete the localization of products for consumers across the country.

This pyramidal multi-layer communication includes all kinds of stars and net red, allowing them to "do their jobs" and play different roles in different stages to different consumers, which is conducive to the effective contact of consumers.

In sports apparel industry, Adidas has successfully utilized the advantages and effectiveness of nanoscale bloggers. In 2016, Adidas started a marketing project called "Tango Squad". Adidas has chosen 15 cities around the world, and has selected some influential figures in social media in every football circle of the city to form a Tango of hundreds of people. Squad "team, through the Facebook, Instagram and other social platform's private letter, as well as Whatsapp, Line and other communication app, direct communication with them, to provide brand exclusive content and the latest trend, through their communication in the circle to achieve the purpose of marketing.

In the face of the upheaval of the hottest fashion bloggers industry, many brands have been disconnected from consumers and are still trapped in the traditional perception of "traffic is king". Some analysts believe that the current fashion blogger marketing should abandon the inherent concepts of super fashion bloggers and large fashion bloggers, focus on the vertical subdivision of the opinion leaders, discern the marketing trend hidden behind the bloggers, and lay out the marketing matrix according to brand positioning and demand.

With the reshuffle of the industry, it is necessary to recognize and evaluate fashion bloggers again. Author: Liang Yutong