Events 
2 Comments It’s All About The Lobster!
Finally, after 11 years in the industry I’m getting to grips with networking events. Not only do I turn up on time, I now attend sessions and hand out more than 1 business card! Thursday saw the launch of A4U’s new intimate events, PerformanceIn Fashion & Beauty where I even found myself making notes!
It’s been a while since I attended a networking event, in the UK anyway, so as usual it was great to catchup for a quick chinwag with usual suspects such as Ma Bailey, Kevchenko, Chris B, Stuart & Carol from POR, Mark & Bruce etc. It was also great opportunity to finally put faces to names of those I’ve been dealing with online for a number of months/years Carla, Fi, Kim & Gill.
Keynote With Wayne Hemingway MBE
A very interesting opening speech, listening to someone talking from a vast wealth of experience of starting off small and ending up big. Wayne was keen to promote his Vintage festival towards the end, which I’d heard of a few days earlier. Would have been a nice touch to give a few tickets away ;)
Balancing Affiliates & Brand Reputation
Quite an interesting session to begin the day. Most people agreed that fashion merchants specifically, are very protective over their brand and are now seeing Affiliates as an extnesion of their brand. Currently everyone has a level of responsibility to ensure brands are being represented in the correct way however I think we’ll certainly see more inhouse monitoring of brands over the coming years.
Something that caught my attention, but due to time restraints didn’t have time to raise with the panel, was the comment that “Brands don’t want affiliates displaying content relating to autumn/winter collections when the spring/summer collection is out…“. This makes sense in terms of creatives, but I think you will be hard pushed to find affiliates removing content from their websites as it’s good google fodder! I suspect this may have been a mistake or was misinterpreted…
Growing your content and blogger affiliates is becoming a key area for merchants and it was suggested that in order to get them on your side, merchants should think about bloggers more as jounalists. If you want a feature in Grazia for example, you wouldn’t email the journalist with nothing but links to your top 10 sellers, you’d supply them with content, offer them something different, (perhaps behind the scenes to photo shoots etc)… This type of thing will not only help build your relationship with blogger, it will give them unique content at the same time has help push your brand and new range/collection.
Discount Code websites have their place, but all agreed that discounting too often can damage a brand, possibly pigeonholing it as “cheap brand” and also have less impact when a discounts are released.
When asked “Are brands less protective when End Of Year approaches and targets haven’t been met?”… There was no diffinitive answer ;)
Smaller fashion labels should consider themselves in a better position in terms of the affiliate model, being able to add a personal element with affiliates and reach out, unlike the larger brands who have multilevels of management to justify things to, and can end up being faceless.
Brand Building on A Shoestring Budget
Colour psychology… Now I know that green text on a red background isn’t the best choice when it comes to website design, but Fiona Humberstone gave some good examples of what works, what doesn’t and most interestingly, highlighted on seasonal changes.
To quickly summarise, a fashion site/blog obviously keeps up with the latest fashions which change for every season. Should it therefore be something to consider for the design and layout of your website, possibly reflecting seasons changes by altering colours, textures, shapes and fonts used? Obviously for wordpress/bloggers this is relatively easy, just by having a dedicated theme for each season!
SPRING
Thoughts invoked: Burst of colour, expressive and warm
Colours: Pastel tones
Shapes: Bubbles, rounded
SUMMER
Thoughts invoked: Refined, elegant, graceful, QUALITY
Colours: Mutted with Grays
Shapes: Flowy
Fonts: Elegant
AUTUMN
Thoughts invoked: Firey, intense, outdoors, textures, natural fibres etc
Colours: Deep reds, autumnal
Shapes: Squares
Fonts: Slab Serif
WINTER
Thoughts invoked: Minimalist,
Colours: Black, white, cool feeling
Shapes: Crisp, square, diamonds
Fonts: Strong Fonts
A lot more information regarding Colour Psychology can be found on the Flourishing Blog which should give you plenty to think about.
Lunch
We had Lobster for lunch and I have to admit, at one point I thought it was going to start trending on Twitter! I didn’t actually get the chance to sample it myself, due to Jimmy Nail having three helpings!
SEO Drop In Clinic
Tried jumping the queue, unintentionally, to have Sam Crocker take apart a lingerie website of mine, with the idea of learning what I can be doing to get better search engine results. A little rushed for time due to the afternoon sessions starting and the number of people wanting advice from Sam & Annabel, but still I came away 2 sound pieces of advice… One of which was a BIG fail on my behalf, the other was something I’d no ideas about and am currently implementing before approaching Google News once again.
A very worthwhile 10 minutes!
Diary of an e-Commerce Manager
LaSenza, Reiss and Lockeroom, all of which I never got chance to chat with, made up the panel on this session. I wasn’t really expecting to learn much as I’m an affiliate, but I was interested to hear what they got up to and what they considered priorities when dealing with affiliates.
There were no surprises as once again the emphasis was that affiliates should integrate into everything. Communications, marketing plans etc and should be considered an extension of a brand, not a unique stream of income. Merchants obviously provide plenty of warning to their stores about future promotions, so why not keep affiliates in the loop at the same time, and cut down on the amount of Friday 5:30pm emails announcing a weekend sale?
Reises stressed that active partnerships should be the focus and not just sales, but merchants should also consider emails, data capture and social media. For example, you could have a blogger with minimal affiliate links, so in effect driving no sales. Yet with a large following on twitter, if they blogged/tweeted about the latest Reiss dress as worn by Kate Middleton, before you knew it, it could be sold out. If you had an active partnership with this blogger/tweeter, then much more could be made of an opportunity like this by both sides.
Interestingly Lockeroom said that merchants rely somewhat on feedback from networks and publishers on whats happening in the marketplace, and report back to clients on what is working for others. It would be interesting if this type of information was made available to other affiliates too!
Engaging Content for the Social Web
Sadly I turned up late for this one and missed most of Mel’s session. Karl Banks however… he should be a comedian! A rocket scientist by trade, Karl offered advice in lamens terms which I always love. Forget about the crappy corporate buzzwords that some people think bolsters their level of intellect (curve ball, low hanging fruit, easy pickings, twice as long as half were all used throughout the day), Karl tells it quickly, simply and with wit!
Karl ran over time, pimms were being served outside, yet when given the choice 95% of people stayed on to hear him finish his session. Hopefully his presentation will be available for download as it contained a lot of useful information.
Speed Networking
OK… I was late… and was suitably told off ;)
This was the first time I’d ever done anything like this and was pleasanlty surprised. It was fantastic to have 2 mins maximum in order to swap cards, have a quick chat about what you do, what you plan to do and what you require from merchants, agencies etc.
People I completely missed this time around include Jeanine from AWin, Erika from Boux Avenue, Caroline from La Senza and most of the webgains crew!
Big Thanks
A huge thanks to Sarah Parsonage and all the rest involved in the organisation of the event. Great to have a small one day conference, focussing on a particular vertical and made the trip down south very worthwhile. An even bigger thanks to Kim Cullum from Crabtree & Evelyn for the huge amount of free samples given to Jane.
The next event will focus on Travel & Leisure and is scheduled for November 2011. If it’s anything like PerformanceIn Fashion & Beauty, it’ll be well worth attending.