This may be partially responsible for the recycling of previous design trends - maybe designers are struggling to come up with anything new because they are blinded by all that's been done. The emergence of digital media has made it very easy for a 'designer' to recreate something that has already been done.
http://www.trendsactive.com/#!/our-trends/societal-trends/
https://www.notjustalabel.com/editorial/fashion-trends%E2%80%99-impact-society
Defining trends nowadays is not an easy task. Trends are in essence very complex mechanisms that mirror changes in the economic and political landscapes.
Fashion itself is a reflection of social, economic, political and cultural changes. It expresses modernity, symbolising the spirit of the times.
In the last thirty years the luxury industry has been completely focused on profitability, and quality has become a secondary objective for the luxury tycoons. The production of the finest merchandise is no longer their main objective. The focus has shifted from what the product is to what the product represents. To achieve this, big luxury corporations have intensively promoted the heritage of a brand, hiring a young designer to give it a modern edge and splashing the logo on everything, from handbags to bikinis. The product itself is not in the spotlight anymore: it is the brand that speaks.
Using a promising young designer’s talent and enthusiasm to “refresh” a legendary brand is a clever marketing tool. Far from supporting new ideas, it is part of a considered strategy for boosting sales and expanding the X, Y or Z luxury empire. A key example of this is Balenciaga, whose former creative director Nicolas Ghesquière left the brand this year, claiming he was “being sucked dry”. He has stated, “they wanted to steal my identity while trying to homogenise things. It just wasn’t fulfilling anymore. It all became so dehumanised. Everything became an asset for the brand, trying to make it ever more corporate – it was all about branding.”
Speaking to The Business of Fashion, Ghesquière said that he was often told his style is “so Balenciaga now, it’s no longer Nicolas Ghesquière, it’s Balenciaga’s style.” With this in mind, it is hard not to question whether today’s trends really are a natural evolution of fashion, or just the rules of big luxury brands, trying to increase their profit and presence. Many so-called trends are just old pieces, minimally reinterpreted in order to have more commercial appeal.
In this context it’s essential to mention that ‘the trend’ is not what it used to be. Many savvy consumers now follow their own fashion rules, inspired by what they see on the fashion-animated streets, the internet, and in the live-streamed fashion shows that are becoming a staple channel for fashion lovers.
Interestingly, Robert Burke, a consultant for luxury brands and previous fashion director of Bergdorf Goodman, amplifies this point: “As little as a decade ago, we would gather at the Ritz in Paris to come up with trend stories, which would then be translated into shop windows and advertising. Forty or fifty of us held the keys to that secret information”. Now, anyone with a curiosity for fashion and access to the internet and television can draw his/her own conclusions. “The trend story is passé,” Mr. Burke told The New York Times.
Nonetheless, trends are still analysed and followed by many consumers and manufacturers, who use them as a way of establishing an order in the chaotic world of fashion. Trend forecasting companies use advanced technologies and professional experts to predict what will sell in the future, and fast fashion brands are using the huge number of trends in demand at any one moment to make and sell more clothes.
By utilising information and communication technologies, and through their efficient, flexible production and distribution systems, fast fashion brands are able to respond to changing trends quicker than ever before. This quick turnover of trends puts money in the brand’s pocket, but doesn’t benefit the consumer - who really needs a new wardrobe three times a week, paying a low price for low quality products, produced at a price ten times lower than the actual selling price?
These fast fashion brands, known for bringing democracy to the once elite world of fashion, have created a following of consumers who practice impulsive shopping, being blinded by the thrill of possessing something new as often as they can. They choose quantity over quality, without asking too many questions about the origin of the clothes they buy.
While fast fashion retailers masterfully imitate catwalk trends in their designs, providing cheaper versions of high-end trends in their stores at the speed of light, it seems that luxury retailers have learned from fast fashion companies too. Luxury retailers, feeling the threat of fast fashion giants, have started adopting similar strategies, trying to provide merchandise faster and in bigger quantities by providing secondary lines, immediately available to purchase.
In this chaotic landscape, there is an obvious need for identity and innovation, to shift the focus to where it should be - on quality and individuality. And where better to find uniqueness and innovation than in the fresh and free voices of young emerging designers?
Without being influenced and limited by rules set by big corporations, emerging fashion designers such as Arjan B, Damien Ravn, Matija Cop and 2014 Hyères finalistMarit Ilison to name only a few, are speaking about a different type of trend. This is a type of trend that customers are happy to embrace - not because everybody else does, but because it makes them look and feel distinctive. Through their innovative designs, emerging designers create the feeling that you buy a piece with meaning and personality, rather than a garment produced in a third world country which gained value only when a logo was splashed on it.
Many retailers and specialists acknowledge that the appetite for niche labels has started to grow, to the detriment of brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton or Giorgio Armani. Now more than ever, we as consumers need to inform ourselves better about how fast fashion retailers produce their merchandise, focusing on issues such as sustainability and ethics. For these reasons, young designers are becoming more valued by both consumers and investors, and the innovation they represent, is - hopefully - not just a passing trend.
http://www.digital-warriors.com/impact-social-media-marketing-trends-digital-marketing/
The Impact of Social Media Marketing Trends to Digital Marketing
The growth of social media marketing platforms has become a major part of building social signals that are very important in any SEO digital marketing campaign. Perhaps you are unaware that the emergence of different social media channels offer internet marketers like you a wider marketing opportunities in building brand visibility over the web. How your website rank on the search engine can make a big impact regarding your customer and lead acquisition and conversion rate for your site.
Social media marketing integrated with search engine optimization strategies is effective in building a website organic traffic. There are different social media marketing trends that will definitely affect the way digital marketers will undertake their search engine optimization campaign to boost their lead generation process and website conversion rates this year.
From the insights of digital marketing experts, here are some of the social media marketing trends that can impact the growth and success of your digital marketing and search engine optimization campaigns. Are you ready to embrace these trends to integrate them to your internet marketing structures?
Investing in social media marketing – A need than a want
Online marketers now view the value of social media marketing for their business on a different perspective. There is a significant explosion in the number of consumers who are using socials as a means of finding products and services that they need. According to prestigious social consumer statistics:
Image credit: www.newmediaandmarketing.com
- Social networking is used by about 76% of businesses in order to achieve their marketing objectives.
- Business retailers experience about 133% increase in revenues after marketing their business in the mobile market that promotes social media marketing value for their business.
- 40% of online shoppers from the US use the Smartphone for in-store shopping.
- About 71% of the consumers respond according to the feedback and recommendation of social users regarding a particular brand.
- Consumer reviews are regarded by shoppers as trustworthy than the marketing promotion coming directly from the brand site.
- The majority of successful brands have a social media page in order to widen their marketing coverage of making their brand more accessible among the social media users.
Among the benefits of using social media channels in promoting a brand include:
1. Growing social signals
Social signals can significantly boost your search engine optimization efforts. The more people in the social media community share, like, recommend and talk about your business the more the search engine finds your website relevant thereby increasing the chance of your web pages to acquire a higher position to the search engine results page.
2. Promote company branding and awareness
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Social media users can always recommend to their social media circles significant quality about your brand. This can be a good marketing boost to your brand image and in growing the number of people becoming more interested about your brand reputation and to become a follower of your brand.
3. Word of mouth advertising is powerful
Word of mouth advertising tends to have a higher trust rating from the consumers than the product descriptions that your company promotes from your site. Whenever your web page gains more likes and shares from the social media community, the wider your audience reach and influence becomes to your target customers.
Integrating social media to your digital marketing campaign is thus crucial in order to attain your marketing goals. From becoming a mere luxurious means of marketing business online, social media marketing becomes an important pillar in SEO with the need of integrating it to digital marketing in an effort of making small to medium businesses at par and competitive with their competitors.
The social advertising trend becoming indispensible in digital marketing
Digital marketers are being lured towards social media advertising due to the trend in the shopping behavior of the consumers. Social media surveys reveal that a big percentage of the consumers spend an average of 37 minutes a day on popular social media channels like Facebook and Twitter and 10% of the internet users are spent on social media sites. Imagine the potential market gain that social media can offer to online marketers.
In 2013, about 53% of digital marketers are already positioning their brand in the social media market and by 2014 social advertising investment will continue to grow. If your business is not taking this marketing step to grow your market coverage by now your competitors are probably taking advanced steps with a better and large market opportunity to play around.
In order to leverage on social advertising to your business advantage, it is essential to implement the following:
- Define measurable goals for your business
- Integrate social advertising to your search engine optimization strategy to optimize your marketing efforts and results.
- Identify your target customer behavior, needs and activities by using SEO analytics. This will help measure the potential effectiveness on the kind of social advertisement approach to use when engaging your target audience.
- Optimize the landing pages of your website by combining SEO and social media marketing strategies. Don’t underestimate the influence of social media buttons in making your landing pages more engaging to your website visitors.
Image Centric content for social media marketing
Social media users are becoming more engaged in sharing images and liking them. For an internet marketer this is a good opportunity to grow the social signals that will give their brand a better search rank. Image content can be very enticing among the social media users that offer a good online exposure of a brand. The image centric content has become one of the social media marketing trends embraced by Atlanta’s social media marketing companies that are likewise integrated to their search engine optimization campaigns under the principle that mages are known to boost a brand’s exposure to the search engine users.
Social integration to email marketing
Email marketing is viewed by digital marketers as one of the pillars for a successful lead conversion. The widespread use of email marketing remains to be prevalent despite the latest trend in digital marketing and marketers are taking the initiative of integrating social media marketing to further strengthen their business lead conversions. By using social media, your leads will find it easier to make a buying decision if they see your brand within their friends’ social feeds. Social media marketers usually employ the process of updating their email marketing content in their social media status updates which effective in promoting brand marketing updates.
DIGITAL WARRIORS can help businesses grow their digital marketing success by integrating an effective social media marketing approach that will give their business maximum exposure online using the power of the social media channels.
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