This year, fashion accessories brand Mimco and its advertising agency Taboo were nominated in the 'Most Innovative Marketing Campaign' category for WGSN's 2011 Global Fashion Awards (more info here).So what did they do to be so innovative? Something pretty simple.
Mimco approached 50 international fashion bloggers to select a product from their new (at the time) collection 'An Unpredictable Revolution', and simply write about it incorporating photo shoot-style pictures and a link to Mimco's collection promo video and website.
Here's a link to one of those blog posts.
This seems like a great idea to me! The more followers a blogger has, the more influential they'll be, and using this concept as a marketing tool I think earns Mimco the nomination (although I'm not sure of the extent of its effectiveness).
The Technorati.com State of the blogosphere 2010 reported statistics from 7,200 bloggers, and revealed 33% of them were approached by brands to post about their brand or product.
Do you think this idea is or will be a big trend in e-marketing? Smart move or waste of time?
Do you follow a blog or have you been influenced by something a blog has said about a brand or product?
Clever strategy. What was in it for the bloggers? Free products, or more?
ReplyDeleteNot just the free products. I think being approached by such a successful fashion brand is great for the reputation and attractiveness of the blogs that were chosen, especially since they are supposed to be 'fashion-orientated' blogs with followers internationally. It would definitely increase the blogger's credibility and potentially the number of followers, while Mimco would have gained exposure internationally without the costs they may have encountered through a different strategy. I couldn't imagine one of the international fashion bloggers declining such an offer.
ReplyDeleteCould the bloggers actually lose credibility if they are seen to be offering biased information, based on "cash for comment" (even if it's not cold hard cash)?
ReplyDeleteSee this story from a couple of years ago on this issue: Link here.
What do others think?
That's an interesting point I didn't think about. I think if we look at the ethics of it, bloggers could indeed lose credibility when blogging based on "cash for comment", but in this case I still feel it would increase their credibility, or at least not harm their credibility.
ReplyDeleteI suggest this mainly because of the way the campaign seemed to be executed. Disclosure seemed to be part of Mimco's strategy, since bloggers were allowed to mention that Mimco had approached them, and blog readers were aware that bloggers were given a product of their choice from Mimco's collection.
So i suppose we could assume the bloggers were giving their own opinion based on a product they genuinely liked, and therefore being associated with the brand in such a way would increase their credibility in the fashion blogging community.
In saying this though, I feel there seems to be a fine line between what could be considered ethical or not when marketers use "cash for comment" strategies. I think Mimco is safe with this one.