The Fair Trade Fashion Movement And The Power of Social Media Influencers to Accelerate Change
This month Grass Monkey will be hosting their inaugural panel discussion on The Business of Fashion featuring industry experts from Revolve, S.O.M. Architecture, Swing Media, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, Role Models Management and more. Up for discussion will be the state of physical retail and what’s next for brick and mortar business along with the necessary implementation of digital tools and technology required for traditional retailers to compete within the digital marketplace. While getting to know our panelists one topic continued to come up — what can we expect from social media marketing and advertising in the next 5 years?
As marketers and eCommerce experts, this question is always top of mind for us, and rightfully so. With more and more retailers continuing to embrace technology, social media job positions and marketing budgets continue to grow.
Recently, we sat down with Role Models Management Co-Founder, Valerie Emanuel¹, for an insider’s perspective on social media trends and the influencer industry. But before we engage in a meaningful conversation involving social media today, let’s take a walk down memory lane for a refresher on social media’s past and how we got here.
These days, if you can’t get your point across in 280 characters or less you run the risk of going virtually unnoticed. The concept of Going Viral may be a 21st Century invention but the vehicle used to generate a social post’s viral status was in practice long before Millennials walked the planet.
Social Media pioneer, Twitter, introduced the #hashtag to the masses when their platform launched back in 2006 but the meta tag was widely used within information technology as early as the 1970s² in early programming language and CPU designs. Despite its obvious benefits though, the concept of the Twitter hashtag didn’t take off overnight. It fact, it wasn’t until its use to organize tweets and news posts related to the 2007 San Diego Forest Fires that the buzzword of today, “Going Viral” was directly linked to the use of the #.
From 2007 onward our society has propelled and taken part in the viral explosion (both positive and negative) of a number of nationwide and global movements originating from a single tweet or instagram post. From the complete revival of men’s deodorant brand Old Spice back in 2010 to the impressive $115 Million raised in 8 weeks through the ALS Ice Bucket challenge — the term “going viral” has become a worldwide phenomenon³ widely recognized in today’s social media landscape.
Recently the fashion industry specifically has been credited with a number of viral movements. One of the most notable being the #fairtrade campaign focused on reducing the waste created by fast fashion brands and promoting the positive effects of purchasing Fair Trade Certified clothing and goods. For those of you new to the Fair Trade Movement you may be asking yourselves, why fair trade?
Fair Trade is a global movement made up of a diverse network of producers, companies, shoppers, advocates, and organizations putting people and our planet first. One example of a Fair Trade Certified company Grass Monkey has had the pleasure of working with is Austin, Texas based Raven + Lily. Raven + Lily is a lifestyle brand offering trend-forward fair trade fashion, accessories and home goods with its core underlying mission to empower women on a global scale. Today the brand helps to employ more than 1,500 artisan women around the world. Providing them with a fair trade wage and access to a safe job, sustainable income, healthcare, and other tools they need to thrive.
Since their launch in 2008, Raven + Lily has leveraged the power of social media to spread the word about the Fair Trade Movement and their brand’s mission statement through collaboration with bloggers and social influencers. These social activations have proven very successful for them. You can see some of their latest influencer projects on The Journal.
Inspired and intrigued by the trends in the social influencer world, we turned to Valerie of Role Models Management for an insider’s perspective on the social influencer industry and its impact on the Fair Trade movement.
Val shared, “I have witnessed a lot of good in this natural, sustainable and organic space and it’s from bigger brands giving small pushes to start the conversation (Redone Denim, Reformation, Levi’s, Gap and HM conscious). There are so many people taking a stand politically and I think these brands want to be on the right side of history and so do the influencers! Just like it was super trendy a few years ago to talk about your organic green juice and now it’s mainstream, it is going to keep getting more normal to know exactly where your clothes came from, who made them and people will want to add that layer of transparency to their social media and work with models who are true to the causes they support.”
Supporting the fair trade cause on social isn’t as easy for influencers these days though — with rules and regulations coming down hard on some of social’s top tier influencers are having their every move monitored by the FTC to regulate who is posting for profit and who isn’t. Shortly after Forbes released a list of Top Influencers in Fashion back in 2017, leading style bloggers began to feel the pressure of advertising regulations and in some cases, fines. But are the newly termed “Micro Influencers”⁴ feeling the FTC pressure as well?
On the subject Val Stated, “This has not impacted us at all. Like I said, most of our influencers handle their own thing but now that W4’s and the government are involved it is really helping them as they can keep track of their income and be better protected financially. I think also disclosing that its an ad gives their followers a little more insight into their world to see that it is not all just selfies and private jets. These posts are curated and it is a business, so I also think its helping them to be seen as legitimate business people.”
A decade ago anyone who tried to argue that a social influencer would soon be considered a legitimate business person would have faced major scrutiny and doubt but yet, here we are. The projected social media advertising spend for 2018 is just over 15 Billion (up 1.5 Billion from 2017) and though this statistic does not include money exchanged between brands and influencers it is estimated that by 2020 the global Ad spend on social influencers will exceed $10 Billion annually⁵.
With the growing investment in influencer marketing are brands seeing a strong return? The Case Studies with our clients at Grass Monkey vary. Our brands yield different results — some campaigns see a true ROI while others are widely successful in building brand awareness. As influencer marketing grows and the reporting technology available to influencer agencies advances we expect to see more pressure from companies and organizations to get a return on ad spend but for now, most brands are prioritizing growing their brand equity and leveraging the power of macro and micro influencers to establish trust with potential consumers.
“I think what most people are doing with influencers now is brand awareness and credibility. They know that by advertising with a model who has a real successful career or a big social media presence, especially if that influencer has a well curated feed, they are associating themselves with the models brand and will gain momentum just from that. When it comes to tiers though in pricing we certainly have people who want to see exactly what they are getting for every dollar they spend. In the past 6 months we have been making sure influencers get their pages on IG turned into businesses pages so they can share metrics with us when needed.”, Val explains.
Money, metrics and FTC regulations aside, the industry of social influencers is evolving at a rapid rate. While major influencers start to launch their own brands and the micro influencer network continues to grow, the competition within the influencer market increases. But when it comes to viral campaigns and global movements, like Fair Trade Fashion, the more the merrier. The people have spoken (on social media that is) and Ethical really is the new black.
In the words of Vivienne Westwood, “Buy Less, Choose Well, Make It Last.”
- At the age of two, Val was scouted at a mall in Los Angeles, and has been working in the entertainment industry ever since. Her commercial credits include Nike, Old Navy and Target and in 2015 after shooting straight outta compton, she put her career on hold to finish her degree in art history and take time to start a family. Val has promoted environmental awareness and animal activism since her early teens. In 2016 she graced billboards across America with Whoopi Goldberg and Kirsten in the Let’s Recycle Right campaign. When an email linked Val with her Co-Founder Therese, it was clear that role models needed to happen and thanks to their unique strength, the journey began.
- The US pound sign, number sign or hash symbol “#” is often used in information technology to highlight a special meaning. (“Pound sign” in the UK means “£”; “#” is called hash, gate, and occasionally octothorpe.) In 1970, for example, the number sign was used to denote immediate address mode in the assembly language of the PDP-11 when placed next to a symbol or a number. In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie used # in the C programming language for special keywords that had to be processed first by the C preprocessor.
- Nidhi, Dave (2018) Top 3 Viral Marketing Campaigns to Take Inspiration. Retrievd from SEM rush: https://www.semrush.com/blog/viral-marketing-campaign-inspiration/
- Micro-influencer marketing is the use of what many people would consider “everyday people” or “average Joes or Janes” to promote specific products on social media. Those products can range from a facial cleanser or lotion to clothing, food, or a new service.
- THE INFLUENCER MARKETING INDUSTRY GLOBAL AD SPEND: A $5-$10 BILLION MARKET BY 2020 (2018) Retrieved from Media Kix: http://mediakix.com/2018/03/influencer-marketing-industry-ad-spend-chart/#gs.r8nWr_I
