A public relations agent can be a huge investment for an emerging fashion label. Assia Benmedjdoub uncovered some practical lessons for brands looking to do their own spin.
Founded by Roxy Jacenko at the age of 24, public relations giant Sweaty Betty has over 100 brands across its portfolio. Jacenko’s right-hand woman, Amy Sutherland, recounted three major fashion campaigns coordinated by the agency at the Higher Learning seminar last month – here, we highlight key elements from each campaign and what brands can do to get in on the action.
Rachel Gilbert: An example of how to maximise every PR opportunity.
The client: Rachel Gilbert is a high-end dress designer.
The idea: This year, the designer took part in Rosemount Australian Fashion Week (RAFW) for the first time. Sweaty Betty began planning Gilbert’s showcase six months in advance, with the idea of maximising PR exposure at every stage of the process. “It’s not cheap taking part in Fashion Week so you have to really take it as far as you can,” Sutherland said.
The execution: Every step in the process with Gilbert was seen as a PR opportunity:
• Media were invited to cover model castings for the show: rising model Samantha Harris was cast three months before her Australian Vogue cover, drumming up additional coverage for the label.
• Napolean Perdis not only sponsored the parade with makeup products, but created the opening and closing looks for the show. “We knew he was going to do something amazing, which was great because we could take out to the beauty press,” Sutherland said. Perdis created a ‘big brows’ concept that was picked up as look of the season by beauty journalists.
• Just before RAFW, the Sunday Telegraph ran an overview of highlights at the event. “We got Rachel in there because [Sydney nightclub entrepreneur] John Ibrahim was due to come to her show,” Sutherland said. “We pitched that to the media before the event.”
• On the day of the show, two magazines were invited backstage to publish behind-the-scenes coverage.
• Even the goodie bags were a PR opportunity. “I went through the goodie bag and totalled everything up and it came to $387.84 retail value,” Sutherland said. “Again we pitched that to the media and got great coverage of in ‘Fashion Week’s best goodie bags’.
The lesson: By finding these newsworthy elements, 120 press clippings were generated for Gilbert throughout the week.
Diana Ferrari: Finding the newsworthy angle in your latest collection.
The client: Diana Ferrari is a High Street shoe retailer aimed at the middle-aged to mature woman.
The idea: Jacenko constantly monitors international magazines for emerging fashion trends. The logic? They are more than likely going to translate to the Australian market in six months’ time. On a trip to the US late last year, Jacenko noticed an article in Marie Claire on boots for women with larger calves. When she came back to Australia, she contacted her footwear clients for potential leads. Diana Ferrari was preparing to launch a boot for women with bigger calves. Bingo.
The execution: The story was pitched to A Current Affair on a Tuesday. The following day, two plus-size models were filmed as they were fitted for boots at a Diana Ferrari concept store. The store manager was also interviewed about the product. The show aired on a Monday evening, hitting 1.5 million viewers across Australia. Pre-sales saw the boots sell out before landing in store.
The lesson: All of this came from an overseas trend which was adapted for the Australian audience. What’s your news angle?
Neuw: A cautionary tale on having a “call to action”.
The client: Neuw is an underground denim brand. “The first campaign they did was all based on greed,” Sutherland said. “We actually went to the shoot. One of the models was in a rock band. He answered the door with a gun in his hand. I was, like, what’s going on? But that’s exactly the kind of vibe they’re going for.”
The idea: The brand didn’t want a “pointless” cocktail party or PR event to promote the label. Working in partnership with a creative agency, the owners devised a scheme to freeze $1000 worth of notes in two huge ice blocks, one in Martin Place (Sydney) and the other in Federation Square (Melbourne). Consumers were invited to bring tools to carve money out of the ice. Sweaty Betty was in charge of promoting the event through media channels before and during the stunt.
The execution: Hundreds of people descended on Martin Place, including journalists from news.com.au, MX and online media channels. “Neuw came up with this concept and worked with their creative agency to get it together,” Sutherland said. “They assigned us to do the PR for it, which is fine, but we would have liked [to see] a call to action. At the end of the day, people turned up, dug the money out of ice and went home and that was it. There was no branding. There wasn’t anything driving them into Glue stores to actually buy a pair of jeans.”
The lesson: Drive the message home. “Had we been involved from day one, we would have said right, let’s get someone like the Cassette Kids decked out in the denim, playing next to the ice block and have promo staff handing out vouchers,” Sutherland said. “Or let’s get a pair of jeans in the ice block and the person who gets the pair of jeans goes into a Glue store and gets a week’s worth of denim. It’s a great stunt, but a lot of people walked away not really knowing anything about the brand. But at the end of the day, it was a lot more effective than a cocktail party or a launch.”
The viral virgin
Long before High Street brand Witchery launched its ‘man in the jacket’ viral marketing hoax, American streetwear brand Ecko fooled the world into thinking it had “tagged the impossible”.
In 2006, a grainy web video showed hooded graffiti artists mounting a barbed wire fence, sneaking past armed security guards and spray painting the Air Force One aircraft. It was so convincing, it not only grabbed the attention of major news agencies, it even had Air Force officials stumped when they were questioned by the Associated Press hours after it hit the web.
“We’re looking at it, too,” Lt Col Bruce Alexander, a spokesman for the Air Mobility Command’s 89th Airlift Wing, told the news service at the time. Australian-born branding expert Barry Mowszowski worked on the campaign in his role at creative agency Droga5 – and revealed lessons for all at Higher Learning.
The back story
“Ecko came to us and said we want to dramatically enhance the Ecko brand and its street credibility. But they also didn’t want to lose the underground image and respect that they had. In truth, Ecko had turned into a billion-dollar brand that young wealthy kids in American suburbia were wearing.”
A viral strategy
“Creatively, we felt the best way to do that would be to come up with – believe it or not, this was very, very, virgin territory for virals – an idea that would give them back their integrity in ... a very stealth way. The creative idea was called ‘still free’. We wanted to tag the impossible. We wanted to tag the Air Force One, which was the president of America’s plane.”
Caught in the act
“We hired a plane. A guy on eBay owned a plane, some nutcase in the midwest. We painted half the side of his plane in Air Force One colours. He wanted us to leave those colours but clearly it was illegal. So we filmed that, we produced that, we took exact screen shots from Google Earth of the St Andrews Air Force Base. We worked out, based on legal advice, that we shouldn’t launch it in America because if we launched it in America, then the seven of us who worked [on it] could’ve been arrested for breaking the Patriot Act. So we thought, ok, we’ll send the tape to a news station in Argentina or somewhere off the shorts. Then we were advised that if it launched anywhere outside of America and the credit came back to Droga5, then David Droga could be arrested because his name was over it all. So we said fuck it, we’ll do it anyway.”
The campaign begins
“We ended up launching it on the net. Just the whole power of this came from this contagious momentum that the graffiti artists and the lovers of the brand had – they were the ones that spread it. We didn’t see it in the traditional media context of ‘oh, well we’ll go to Sydney Morning Herald’. The momentum came from that core sweet spot that propagated the viral. And they knew that it was a hoax. The fact that they were in on the joke in some way; they then carried the momentum. Then CNN and all those news stations picked up on the fact that, how could someone tag the impossible?”
A bigger statement
“‘Still free’ was actually a provocative statement during the Bush era where there was this undercurrent voice, which is now manifested in Barack Obama, which is ‘we are still free’. Which to remind you: Guantanamo. Iraq war. There were real issues that were plaguing America from a cultural perspective [at the time]. That statement ‘still free’ was a statement about we are still free, you can’t suppress us.”
What this means for brands
“The lesson for you guys is the way you use PR as a [communications] tool is very powerful. What is your message? What is your idea? What is your insight? You can really propagate that and bring momentum to it in simple ways. You don’t need a standard press release in a very corporate spin. That wasn’t corporate spin. That was a culturally inspired around ‘still free’ that we manifested in the brand.”