Smart Fashion
Corporate sponsors finally got smart about the advertising they pay big bucks for in NY's Fashion Week this year.
Instead of simply paying to have their name mentioned in the show's program among all the other sponsors (seriously, who ever looks at those long lists of company names?), some companies worked their products right into the show. The Container Store provided storage boxes and shoe racks backstage at the Doo.Ri show, and Thomas Pharmaceuticals handed out Acid+All tablets to help the stylists, models and grunt-workers cope with all the stress that Fashion Week entails.
Not only does this kind of marketing create more visibility, but it also allows consumers to test out the product while creating a strong memory surrounding its first use. A show during Fashion Week is the highlight of the work year for everyone involved, so they are going to recall every moment of it; including taking that Acid+All tablet when the adrenaline was pumping even harder than the catwalk music.
Fashion Week is packed with opinion leaders, they are the ones that decide what will be in style for the upcoming months. And since Word-of-Mouth marketing is the most influential way to reach an audience at the moment, Fashion Week participants might as well be a marketer's best friend. If the models use the product (and like it), all their wanna-be model acquaitances will use it, and then all the wanna-be's friends will use it, and then the friends of friends of the so-called models will use it...and so forth.
This marketing style is such a perfect fit, it's only appropriate that it takes place at Fashion Week.
