BoF's Year in Fashion | Pandemic Marketing and Beyond

What Does a Winning Post-Covid Marketing Plan Look Like? [View on Web]( [Add to contacts]( [New reader? Subscribe]( [BoF]( YEAR IN FASHION THE UPFRONT The Business of Fashion will be taking a break between 24 December 2020 and 3 January 2021. In the meantime, explore our analysis from an unparalleled year for the global fashion industry. We wish you a happy holiday season and a great start to 2021. Dear BoF Community, When executives look to trim costs in tough times, marketing budgets are often the first to get cut, as was the case for most fashion and beauty brands once the coronavirus pandemic shut down the global economy. But 2020 also acted as an accelerant for trends that were bubbling up in fashion marketing for years. Namely, any marketing spend that couldn’t definitively prove its ROI — like magazine advertising, billboards and subway ads — was on the chopping block. Although marketing budgets have rebounded from their March dips (with ad dollars largely allocated to big tech platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Google) reaching shoppers is only one struggle fashion brands faced this year. Communicating with consumers — those who were experiencing a global pandemic, racial reckoning and fraught political environment simultaneously — became a minefield. Shoppers were more skeptical than ever about brand values and messaging, as were the influencers who helped amplify those brands to millions of social media users. Alexandra Mondalek, Senior Editorial Associate [Intelligence]( [What Does a Winning Post-Covid Marketing Plan Look Like?]( BY Alexandra Mondalek [Crisis-driven cuts to marketing budgets have been anything but uniform. Here’s where CMOs are placing their bets next year.]( Try BoF Professional for 30 days for $1/£1 [JOIN]( [BoF Professional]( [Why Social Media Advertising Is Still Necessary]( BY Alexandra Mondalek [Brands that benefited from a drop in customer acquisition costs at the beginning of the pandemic must figure out how to get the most out of their investments as prices rise dramatically.]( Try BoF Professional for 30 days for $1/£1 [JOIN]( [Intelligence]( [How to Work With TikTok Talent]( BY Alexandra Mondalek [Fashion has struggled with how to leverage influencers on TikTok. But the sooner brands let go of the playbook that works on other platforms, the better off they’ll be.]( Try BoF Professional for 30 days for $1/£1 [JOIN]( [Intelligence]( [How Not to Be a Boring Direct-to-Consumer Brand]( BY Alexandra Mondalek and Chavie Lieber [In a fashion and beauty market packed with look-a-like labels, more start-ups are breaking the mould with a bolder aesthetic.]( Try BoF Professional for 30 days for $1/£1 [JOIN]( [Intelligence]( [How Impactful Were the Digital Fashion Week Shows, Really?]( BY Alexandra Mondalek [Despite efforts made to adapt real-life runway shows and collection presentations for the Men’s, Resort and Couture 2020-2021 season, many failed to have the same impact on brands’ marketing reach.]( Try BoF Professional for 30 days for $1/£1 [JOIN]( [Intelligence]( [Selling Fashion on Instagram: Expectation vs. Reality]( BY Alexandra Mondalek [The social media platform says that by selling products directly on their feeds, brands can meet customers where they spend time and reduce the clicks required to convert ad impressions into sales. But brands and consumers aren't fully sold on the idea yet.]( Try BoF Professional for 30 days for $1/£1 [JOIN]( [Op Ed]( [Op-Ed | An Enlightened Post-Pandemic Consumer? Don’t Count on It.]( BY Eugene Rabkin [Some believe coronavirus will prompt fashion consumers to reassess their values and shift spending away from fast fashion and luxury megabrands. They are wrong, argues Eugene Rabkin.]( [Case Study]( [Case Study: How to Market a New Brand]( BY Chantal Fernandez [Effective marketing is a challenge for every type of consumer brand, but especially for emerging brands. In our latest in-depth case study, BoF decodes the strategies driving real results for eight young lines.]( [Case Study]( [Gen-Z Shopping: Separating Myth from Reality — Download the Case Study]( BY M.C. Nanda [A new generation of consumers is coming of age during a critical, sink-or-swim period for brands and retailers. In our latest case study, BoF puts some of the widely accepted attributes of Gen-Z under the microscope, and interrogates how five industry players — Nike, Brandy Melville, Morphe, Depop and Louis Vuitton — have successfully capitalised on the Gen-Z opportunity.]( BoF CAREERS - FEATURED JOBS  [Manager, Consumer Insights]( [T](  New York, United States  [Senior Product Manager E-Commerce (m/f/d)]( [Hugo Boss](  Stuttgart, Germany  [Merchandise Admin Assistant - Buy Brands]( [D]( Street Market](  London, United Kingdom [View All Jobs](  [Subscribe Were you forwarded this email? To subscribe to this newsletter, click below.]( for Free]( Follow Us [The Business of Fashion]( [Sponsorship & Advertising]( [About]( This email was sent to {EMAIL} [Add to Address Book]( | [Unsubscribe]( | [Edit Newsletter Subscriptions]( The Business of Fashion Moray House - 6th Floor · 23-31 Great Titchfield St London W1W 7PA · United Kingdom