Month: September 2014

8 Simple Questions to Help Fashion Bloggers and Brands Collaborate

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In part one of my guide to collaboration for fashion bloggers and brands, I explained what collaboration really means, its benefits and what your most basic shared goal could be. In part two, I’ll give you a guide on how to articulate that goal more specifically.

Last time, I mentioned the basic shared goal between brands and publishers needs to be:

Excellent, unique content that our receptive audiences will enjoy and is commercially viable

But what does this content look like? How long is it? Is it visual, verbal, a thing or something intangible? And how do you make money from it? Explaining this unwieldy shared goal is difficult, but pretend you’re an agency and it makes much more sense.

You work in an agency (like Mad Men, with some great outfits and too much booze). A client approaches you to advertise shoes. Before you even pick up a pen, paintbrush or crystal tumbler full of whisky, you need to ask the right questions and get a full brief.

Here are 8 simple questions to help fashion bloggers and brands collaborate.

Why are we doing this?

The importance of your goal can’t be underestimated. Both publishers and brands need to clearly set out why you’re doing this: what your basic shared goal is (see above) and why it’s important to you.

What is the minimum we can do to succeed?

Remember the uninspired 150-word blog post in exchange for a cheese hamper? That’s the bare minimum idea both publisher and brand agree on. For publishers, brands will often approach you with an idea. Often this idea is the bare minimum. If you don’t like it, think about…

How can we improve this?

An advert saying “BUY SHOES” isn’t going to get a Yellow Pencil. One with a witty strapline, beautiful photography and great art direction might. Whether you’re a publisher or brand, you need to think about how to improve the bare minimum idea in order to achieve your shared goal more successfully.

What else can I do to help?

For brands, this is an important question to ask. Provide the bare minimum of assets and ideas and you’ll get just that - bare minimum product. Look at what else you can provide to help your publisher create the new, improved idea.

For publishers, it means being helpful, not obstinate. What does the brand need from you to get the new, improved idea sold to their client?

How can we sustain this?

Longevity is key in forming successful relationships. Think about how the new, improved idea can be extended in order to build audience interest, create further excellent content and commercial opportunities. One poster about shoes is fine; a five-week campaign on the fashionable benefits of shoes will have much better impact.

How much is it worth?

Talking about cold, hard cash can be tricky but both publisher and brand need to know how much this shared goal is worth.

For brands, this might be set by the client’s budget. For publishers, this will be set by your rate. When payment-in-kind is offered (like a product or experience) calculate how much this means in real terms.

How can we increase commercial benefit?

Just like thinking about sustaining and extending the new, improved idea, thinking about how to sustain and increase commercial benefit is important to the success of your shared goal. This includes making it easy for your receptive audience to buy and the ways in which publishers are paid (like one-off flat rate or commission fees).

Finally, what do we agree on?

You have your shared goal and your new, improved idea that’s sustainable and packed to the brim with commercial opportunities. Make sure you both agree on what each party will deliver and when. In your ad agency, you wouldn’t spend hours working on a sparkling new TV advert for shoes unless there was a contract. Write it down and agree on it before you begin the fun bit - collaborating!

These questions seem like a lot to think about when this might be a tiny bit of your client’s budget or a small part of your income as a publisher. But working through the checklist doesn’t have to take weeks - rattling through the first three questions can take minutes for a creative person.

A little time spent thinking at the beginning of a collaborative project makes the whole relationship run smoothly, letting you spend lots more time on the fun of creating.

Next time

In the final part of this guide to collaboration for fashion bloggers and brands, I’ll show you a case study using these questions, plus give you some freebies to help you in future collaborative projects.

But before then I’d like to hear your thoughts on these questions. Have you ever worked together (whether you’re a blogger or brand) to develop an idea? Did you work out a more commercial way of approaching the project? Share your collaboration stories below.

How Fashion Brands and Publishers Can Collaborate: Part 1

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Whether you’re a fashion writer, blogger, illustrator or photographer, collaborating with a big brand can sound like a dream come true. It looks great on your CV or as a cute blog button. But in reality true collaboration between individual publisher and fashion brands is rare.

My recent article on using collaboration at work outlined three different types of project goals: separate, connected and the same. Often online fashion publishers get approached by brands for a project where goals are connected. The brand’s goal might be to bump their search value through links on your site, or enhance their reputation with an introduction to a new audience. Unless they’re feeling particularly selfless, publishers aren’t going to be interested in that. Your goals as an online publisher might be to gain greater exposure through the brand’s channels, or create a new piece of content.

Those goals aren’t the same. They’re connected - the other party’s help is useful in getting there - but you’re not working to the same purpose.

“Let’s collaborate…I mean…”

What makes it more confusing is brands often approach online publishers saying “Let’s collaborate!” when really they mean “We’ll pay you to do what we brief.” The latter is fine, bread-and-butter work, but often produces generic, dull, unfulfilling content. How often have you read…

“I love [generic product e.g. cheese]. So imagine how excited I was when The Big Cheese Company emailed me to collaborate with them on a project…”

…followed by an incredibly boring, predictable review of their latest product, with an asterisk to show the publisher got paid (or received a ton of cheese instead of real money).

True collaboration - working together to achieve the same goal - offers a much better opportunity for publisher and brand:

  • Higher quality, more involving content
  • A longer relationship based on mutual interest
  • Greater authenticity

Imagine it like this.

The brand is a fantastically wealthy person who wants to build a house. They go to the publisher, but instead of treating them like an architect, they treat them like a builder. The wealthy person tells the builder what to do (believing they know what’s best) and, as the builder can see a bit of cash and credibility coming from the project, they do exactly what they’re told. What you get is a house that looks absolutely fine, but nothing special.

If the wealthy person instead went to the architect, they’d both create something spectacular. Each knows what they want the house to include, but know they need each other to shape the final product. They have the same goal for that final product: an incredible build everyone knows about. Plus, next time the wealthy person needs to build a house, they’ll call on the same architect.

The Big Problem

Whether you’re a brand or a publisher, planning on working to the same goal rather than connected ones will benefit you both. The Big Problem in this collaboration is articulating what that goal is.

The shared goal needs to fulfil criteria common to publishers and brands. What do you both have in common? Three good, general cross-over criteria between publishers and brands are:

  1. A receptive audience - your readership or community
  2. A need for excellent, unique content - to engage your audience
  3. Creativity and commercial awareness - if you’re a publisher or brand and don’t have this, pack it in right now

Using these criteria, at a very basic level, your shared goal needs to be:

Excellent, unique content that our receptive audiences will enjoy and is commercially viable

Is that an uninspired 150-word blog post in exchange for a cheese hamper and one link? No. Is it something much more valuable - an incredible build everyone knows about? Yes.

Next time

In part two of this guide to collaboration for fashion publishers and brands, I’ll give you a guide on how to articulate that goal more specifically.

For now, think about when you’ve worked with brands or publishers in the past: did you work on a shared goal? Did you take the time to find out what you had in common? Share your collaboration stories below.

How to Collaborate with Fashion Brands: A Case Study

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In part one of my guide to collaboration for fashion publishers and brands, I explained what collaboration really means, its benefits and what your most basic shared goal could be. In part two, I gave you eight simple questions to ask when collaborating with brands. In this final part, I’ll use my guide to show you a case study for brands and publishers to work together, plus give you some helpful freebies.

The Case Study

Here’s a real email sent by a real brand (with their name removed because I’m nice). The brand is offering a fashion product, but is a brand specialising in an online money-saving tool. I’m going to use this email as a case study.

Hello,

Would you like a free pair of Swarovski Crystal silver ear rings worth £35.50?

What you’ll need to do:

  • Write a blog post telling readers about the deal and that XXX found it
  • Include the following image
  • Include one do follow link to XXX within a paragraph
  • Complete the post by 30th September 2014
  • Email [email protected] once the post is up

Apply Now:

https://XXX.com/blogger-outreach-swarovski-crystal

Please only apply if you think that this is a genuinely good deal and you want to let users know about it and the service that XXX.com offers.

Thanks for emailing me XXX, although I’m not sure you really put your heart into it. Never mind - I’m a creative kind of gal (did you read those analogies in my previous posts?) and I think we could work together.

Let’s answer my eight simple questions to help us work out how we could collaborate.

Why are we doing this?

From your email, I can see you want to achieve low-cost, high-impact marketing through judicious placement of links on my blog. But we could achieve excellent, unique content that our receptive audiences will enjoy and is commercially viable!

What is the minimum we can do to succeed?

To answer this question, think about the least work that needs to be done to get to the goal with both you and the brand feeling good:

  • Write something interesting and unique about the product and service (not a basic blog post everyone else will be writing)
  • Make sure we both share it on our social media channels (not just provide the brand with all the follow links)
  • Provide fair payment (not just payment in kind)

How can we improve this?

Get your brainstorm on and think of a new and improved idea. How about the history of Swarovski and their crystals? Or interviewing the company’s founder? Or creating an outfit collage using the product and others from the site?

What else can I do to help?

Here, you need to work out what both parties need to create a better project. For this project, that includes images and information from the brand, and stats and a better idea from the blogger.

How can we sustain this?

To answer this question, think about how you can make this project recurring or continuous. This project could be sustained by a monthly post or cross-channel campaign focusing on a new product and new channel every few months.

How much is it worth?

Use the cost of products or payment they’ve offered you to calculate how much it’s worth - plus use your own hourly rate.

At the moment, this project’s payment-in-kind barely covers time spent writing, let alone the cost of a permanent link, photography, reviewing, etc. - and it’s not real money. It’s the bare minimum payment for a bare minimum outcome.

When you think of some new, improved ideas as I have above, cost for these using your hourly rate and give the brand an accurate budget to sign off. You’ll both feel comfortable and valued.

How can we increase commercial benefit?

Here, you need to think like a business: different ways of paying and buying.

It’s not suitable for every project, but here you could establish a base rate of payment plus commission on every reader who clicks through to purchase the product or another product from the money-saving service’s site. Simple, but designed to make each party up their game.

Finally, what do we agree on?

Once you’ve received the initial idea, answered the eight simple questions and approached them about developing the idea, make sure you give them a succinct explanation of the new, improved project. If they like it, finalise the agreement with written correspondence to make sure you’re both happy.

———-

Collaboration for a shared goal is all about working together to create something brilliant. The reasons fashion brands and fashion bloggers have such impact in the industry is because when they team up effectively, their reach is extensive.

Whether you’re a blogger, search executive, illustrator, marketing team or an indie looking for support, collaborate on a shared goal and you’ll reap greater benefits than working for your individual aims in a bare minimum, bare output project.

Pin and print for later…

A Venn diagram to help you work out what you and your partner have in common (for brands and bloggers).

The ‘eight simple questions’ checklist for working on an improved project with brands (for bloggers):