3 ways to use audience intelligence for fashion innovation
This is a guest blog written by Edward Bass, founder & director of EntSight, a global audience intelligence consultancy which works with leading brands, entertainment groups and financial companies in order to help them develop insight driven strategies for their digital audiences. Connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Innovation is a constant requirement in today’s Fashion world, with new designs and features vital to keeping product lines fresh for consumers.
Bringing new designs and product concepts to life requires confidence and certainly that the choices made will resonate with consumers – and so there is a powerful role which audience intelligence can play here by exploring their behaviours and preferences for ‘signals’ to inform these choices.
Over the past couple of years entSight have worked with innovative British Menswear brand DressCode to guide their product and brand development, and we’re excited to share insights from that journey here:
CashCuff – contactless payment innovation
Analysis of DressCodes’s target consumer audiences of fashion focused tech professionals revealed a common factor – they all over indexed in their use of NFC for contactless payment, as well as for their use of Smartwatches.
This vital insight inspired DressCode to develop their own innovation ‘CashCuff’ which enables owners their shirts to make NFC payments by holding the cuff near a card reader machine.
Given the increased need for contactless payment due to Covid-19, this kind of innovation is now more vital than ever.
Driving advocacy with free gifts
By studying which factors drive the customer journey of DressCode’s audiences we identified that free gifts included with online orders were more likely to ensure they advocated the brand to their friends, family and contacts.
DressCode was already ahead of this by providing free pocket squares with their Direct to Consumer online sales and used the information to promote these free gifts more effectively. More recently DressCode have adapted these pocket squares to become designed facemasks, in response to changing customer needs.
Sustainability stories
The environmental impact of fashion is a growing concern among consumers and DressCode’s target audiences were no exception, with all but one segment – the Young Tech Professionals – over-indexed significantly for interest in shopping sustainably.
This insight inspired the brand to develop social content highlighting the durability and long lasting nature of their shirts, including footage of experimental stress tests.
These are just a few examples of how audience insight can be used to inspire and inform innovation in fashion, and as ever a demonstration of how understanding your consumer audiences can ensure you respond to their lifestyle and behaviours.