How a French Fashion House Become International
Balmain — A Social Media Winner
Balmain, a luxury French fashion house that founded in 1946 by Pierre Balmain. The brand is well known in the high end fashion category. However, it is not always successfully. in 2004, after the former director De La Renta left, because one investor could not make honor its commitment, Balmain house applied the bankruptcy protection. And the main time, the brand was forgotten by the public. The things started to change when the Christophe Decarnin became the designer of Balmain. Especially in the 2011, Olivier Rousteing became the new creative director of Balmain, the brand is on the rise.
“I was born with Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and Skype. The fact is I love communicating with people. I love pop culture, and pop, for me, is popular and population”
— Olivier Rousteing
Because of it, the Balmain started to use the social media to advertise the brand. Rousteing thinks that using social media like Instagram can have stronger connection with younger generation rather than the traditional way like magazine. The truth is: It Does!
The one of most successful campaigns of Balmain with social media is the collaboration between the Balmain and H&M. For this campaign, Kendall Jenner, Gigi Hadid, and Jourdan Dunn were the main face in it. Therefore, not only the followers of official social media account for H&M, but also the followers of social media accounts for three super models had chance to know about the Balmain. After the collaboration campaign on the social media, when the products launched to the market, the products were out of stock within few hours. There is no doubt that the collaboration had successful because of the social media.
“Day after day, month after month we saw that the image of Balmain was changing and from a very Parisian house, we became a very international house, and a very democratic house, due to Instagram and the communication made by Olivier, and it has helped us reach new customers”
— Emmanuel Diemoz, Balmain’s chief executive.
Compare to the same brands level like Moschino, Balmain more focus on the Instagram than other social media. Balmain take more niche way to reach the new customers on social media. For now, Balmain has 5.2 million followers on Instagram, and every post has more than twenty thousand people engaged. People come from all around the world can know about the Balmain information immediately by following their Instagram. More and more people may start to know about the brand and like it by the super stars effect. Anyway, the efforts that Balmain puts on Social media get the return. the awareness of the Balmain and brand value are all on the rise.
This post was created as part of the Global Luxury Management Program at the NC State Poole School of Management. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
http://www.crimsonhexagon.com/blog/current-events/balmain-x-hm-the-impact-of-influencer-marketing/
