Music for Fashion Marketing: How to use music to amplify your brand and find an audience for your products
Fashion and music are very similar in many ways, both can be categorized by genre or style, each of them has the ability to create a community around them, both reflect the personal identity and sense of self and both are universal. Brands are constantly competing to attract new customers and retain the old ones, it has become vital to provide customers with an intuitive, emotional and personalized shopping experience.
It wasn’t uncommon to see fashion brands collaborate with photographers, bloggers or vloggers, to achieve this goal. Marketing teams have to keep churning out innovative and smart marketing techniques. One such technique is Music branding, or in simple words the marriage of fashion branding and music.
Music branding enables the reinforcement of brand identity through music, by enabling emotional engagement by awakening associations.
Using music for marketing can have many positive implications, for a startup or an established fashion brand. Music will help build an emotional connection to the brand, increase brand recall, create an exciting and engaged community around it.
Create and convey your brand’s image through music:
Fashion eCommerce Marketing is predominantly a visual world, thanks to Instagram, Snapchat and Pinterest. However music seems like the missing part of the puzzle, it helps to establish an emotional connection which forms a brand image in the minds of the customer. You want your customer to perceive you as a fun, cool brand? Create music that conveys that. Every time the customer hears a song that has been embedded in the promotion ads or social media campaigns or runway shows of the brand, it sets an association of the brand’s image. It will also help create brand recall.
Attracts a buzz and an engaged community through music branding: Many brands have started collaborating with music artists, to create Social Media Marketing for Fashion Brands Campaigns, fashion shows, live concerts etc. This increases brand recognition and also creates a buzz, which is beyond its original core products. The brand becomes more than just clothes.
Music branding helps customers discover and share your brand’s content: Content equals currency. Providing your customers with content that they can resonate with gives them something that they would keep coming back for. A piece of music can help you put forth a particular message that the brand is trying to convey. If it resonates with your audiences, there is the added benefit of customers sharing it on their social media networks, which can dramatically increase your audience reach and customer base.
So if you are considering making music a part of your brand’s marketing strategy, let us understand the 3 steps you can use to get familiarized with the process of music branding in. It will be unique for each brand, however, there are certain universal rules you must keep in mind.
- Define your brand’s image: Think of your brand as a real person, what would this person sound like? Would it sound acoustic or more melodious like country music? Would it be bold like hardcore punk or soothing like a classical song? It would make sense to create music which is similar to the personality of your brand
- Have clear objectives: It is also beneficial to understand the objective of attaching a particular style of music to your brand’s identity. Try to define short term and long term goals of your brand that you want to achieve through music branding.
- Deliver unique brand experiences keeping your target audience in mind: Make music branding a part of your brand’s DNA, do not treat it like a current fad that you try just because it is hot at the moment. Exercise the same caution while you select the music, it should be based on your brand not the current music trends.
Music branding is not a new phenomenon, but not many brands have yet developed a music branding strategy. The ones who have sure did an excellent job. It might help you to take inspiration from the brands that have done it right, and keep in mind the latest trends of music branding:
Familiarize yourself with Pandora and Spotify to launch new collections and lookbooks: Pandora, Deezer, Apple, Google, Spotify, Tidal, YouTube Red and Soundcloud are all music streaming platforms that are growing in age and rage with each passing day. If you are launching a new range or a lookbook magazine, you can create a playlist on these platforms that accompanies and compliments the launch. Frank and oak and Victoria’s Secret are two such brands, who take music branding to amplify their brand’s image very seriously. They create a playlist on Spotify that is curated by music artists, with songs that complement their upcoming event.
Work with emerging artists to curate your playlists: As an emerging fashion brand, you can add a cost-effective twist to your music branding strategy by working with upcoming artists. They can curate your brand’s playlists on platforms like Soundcloud and Spotify, this makes your brand a part of customers everyday life.
Use music artists as influencers to create genuine advocacy: Get in front of your audiences and let them hear your melodies, like Maison Kitsune, who dressed music artists in their clothing collection, in a live music concert. While this may seem like an expensive marketing strategy, you can add an economic twist to it, by gifting your brand’s merchandise to music artists and asking them to sport them in live concerts and music festivals. In exchange of the merchandise and maybe a nominal flat fee, you can also get them to mention and hashtag your brand name on their social media networks.
The magic formula, after all, is finding the perfect fit for the brand, the music and it’s target audience.
About Author
Deepika is Netgains’s Marketing Expert and oversees various Netgains marketing functions, including Brand Positioning, Social Media, Influencer Marketing, and Content Marketing.
Since 2004 Netgains has been building fashion e-commerce website & running effective fashion digital marketing campaigns for fast-growing as well as established fashion brands. Our expertise in fashion eCommerce ensures that your brand and products are delivered to your customers in a way that makes them buy. Get in touch today!
