Get Creative: 4 Collaboration Ideas For Fashion Brands & Bloggers This Halloween
By now, as a brand you’re probably aware, that influencer marketing is the most authentic way to connect with your target market, quickly switching them from bystanders into buyers.
But even better than just reaching out to an influencer and asking them to post a picture of your new fashion pieces, is implementing your influencer marketing into natural events. In with the flow of the calendar of natural events, we’re talking special events and seasonal holidays, we have Halloween just around the corner.
It’s periods like these during which influencers want to be a great source of inspiration for their audiences. And as a brand you can help them become just that. Halloween is the time of the year when influencers want their feeds to be as fruitful, gruesome and as orange as possible. They want to get involved, more than ever in collaborations with brands to guarantee that their feeds are full of colour and inspirational enough, so that their ideas are appreciated and replicated.
This means that getting influencers to be a part of your marketing campaign should naturally be easier. But you still have to persuade them and excite them with what you have in store for them and what you literally have in your store! That’s why ZINE has four great ideas to inspire your fashion brand-blogger collaboration this Halloween which should in turn inspire your target audience.
Remember, when deciding on who to choose for your campaign, it’s best to choose influencers whose audience obviously fits your target market, but who would also typically post on specific events. Making your brand’s campaign fit nicely with their original content.
Party/ event
Depending on your budget you could host a party. It might not be one of the most original ideas you’ve heard but, throw in a theme matching both your brand and the specific time of the year, find a few influencers who would wear your pieces and will blog, vlog and post about it; and you’ve hit the jackpot. It’s important that the theme you choose is related to your brand. So as to make, the event and your brand unique, memorable to not only your potential consumers but to your influencers. Your aim is to host a party, influencers, would want to tweet, and live stream about, and in the near future, a brand they would want to work with and collaborate more with.
Hosting an event or party, is to attain widespread attention for your brand, rather than to promote specific products or a new clothing line. Although you could gift, and ask some influencers to wear your pieces to the event.
As a brand you will sponsor the event, publish videos and pictures of the party everyone wants to attend.
Customize their costumes
If you’re a small brand with a restricted budget, rather than hosting a big party, entertain your influencers in a different way. Your brand’s clothing line may not include any Halloween costumes, but that shouldn’t stop you from getting influencers to wear your pieces as part as their Halloween costume. Send pieces from your clothing line to your influencers and ask them to create a Halloween outfit from them.
As a fashion brand, your pieces may be pretty basic, mostly everyday wear, evening wear or loungewear. Use this to your advantage, ask influencers, bloggers or vlogger to create scary Halloween outfits from your originally pretty minimalist clothing. See how creative they get with what you supply them with. They don’t necessarily need to shred it to pieces, but by using their imagination, they can add accessories, or make a statement with their makeup. The whole idea is to allow your influencers to get inspired, who will in turn inspire their audience using your products. There’s a sense of excitement and novelty added to taking something and turning it into something completely different. It’ll not only show your brand’s versatility but also, push audiences to get creative and buy pieces from your line to recreate the influencers outfit.
Everyone likes a little bit of DIY and if they’re not great at it doesn’t really matter because let’s be honest, Halloween is probably the only time you can cover up a DIY bodge up. If the outfit looks completely different to what was originally planned, it’s probably the only time you can use an excuse and make something up.
Collaboration live meetup
Something in between the two is a live meetup/ dress-up session. What this entails is inviting a couple of influencers to your studio or store and selecting outfits they think would make great Halloween outfits for each other, challenging them to make the best costumes they can. Inspiring influencers to get ready for Halloween with your clothing.
This may be more difficult to organise, as you have to be sure the influencers you invite, if not already associates, can at least stand to be in the same room as each other. You could also ask influencers to bring a plus one, guaranteeing they’re in good company. Influencers love this sort of thing; although it’s much more time consuming than a normal picture post, it creates a buzz among influencers and audiences from within their niche.
Again influencers will post their experience on their social media which will hopefully create a little FOMO among their audience. As it’ll be exclusively for influencers, audiences will march in your store the next day, just to attain a sense of involvement.
Competition
Competitions can be adopted anywhere and in any of the examples above; it’s a great way to get audiences involved. For example combining the ideas, audiences can win a chance to attend an event you host with their favourite influencers, by attempting to create an outfit using pieces from your brand’s line. Turning their clothes into a scary, yet fashionable attire. Or they can just be asked to submit their Halloween look to win, even if they’re not wearing anything from the brand.