Blog Post #3
As I attended the Better Lives lectures for fashion PR and communications, I’ve picked up many interesting knowledge along the way. The lectures taught me how to plan campaigns and promote specific brands in a way that is suitable for their target audience. I was put into groups of four and was given a task that allowed me to explore the many ways to produce an effective campaign. The main aim of the project was to find a charity and cause for the brand a suitable influencer that will benefit the brands popularity and make it stand out to customers that the founders initially want to target.
I have work experience in terms of PR, therefore I do have basic knowledge on campaigns and its components, but working on this project helped me dive into campaigns in a more complex and specific manner. Doing this project make me realize that PRs actually do a lot more research than I anticipated. This includes the context of several factors in the campaign such as influencers, charity and the brand history itself. I found myself spending several days doing research on my given brand, including how the founders started it and the details of its collection. This was because I needed to pinpoint a specific target audience – making a consumer moodboard was also another task that gave me new knowledge on PR. I discovered that identifying target consumers are more than just a few general words to describe individuals who would buy the brands products, it is identifying who the customers are as a person, where they come from and sometimes even narrowing it down to their social status (including salaries, occupation, etc.). A helpful piece of feedback I’ve gotten from Sophia and Leigh is that in depth research on the influencers background is also essential because it needs to match the reputation of the brand. The influencer needs to have some sort of personal connection to the brands story in order to be a good promotor. Their reputation, characteristic and individual style should also match the brand so that the consumers can see the influencer is authentic to the brand. This made me very aware of how specific PRs have to be with their jobs in order to develop an efficient campaign that will be beneficial for the name they’re representing.
This not only helped me understand the PR industry a lot better, but gave me a new perspective to look at as a fashion journalist as well. I now see how PRs promote their brand in order to get people talking and the methods that they use in order to persuade audiences that their product is worth consuming. I will try to incorporate this mindset when I write features or news stories about products or brands in the future as I think having different perspectives can add many angles to a writing piece. This is a big personal development for me as a student in LCF.