Shadowing the Marketing Team at CPWOS

Unfortunately, being a fashion student with a serious spending habit requires money. So I spend 24 hours of my week working as a Customer Service Adviser at a Carphone Warehouse Online Solutions call centre. I really hate feeling like I'm wasting time, so although I need to work over summer I've been trying to gain some work experience with the company's Marketing team. I first of all needed to figure out which job roles suits my course the most, I was given the chance to sit with some of the team and learn about their roles. I wasn't allowed to do this within my current working hours but I learnt so much from the few hours I was there, it was so worth it!

I shadowed five members of the team, learning about each role; starting with monitoring the website productivity for two of the company's current sites. I feel like the knowledge I gained from even just 20 minutes of shadowing this role will be beneficial to me and my uni work. It's helped me to understand how websites can be analysed; I'm constantly picking apart print and TV ads but websites are more complex. It's so interesting seeing the ways in which you can plan the layout of a website to maximize productivity and accessibility for the user. There are some really useful applications/sites that allow you to monitor which parts of the site are being accessed the most; they can monitor consumer patterns and cater to their needs more efficiently. It's important to see the journey taken by the customer and look for ways to make this journey as smooth as possible.

Promotional emails are considered in a similar way. Each tiny element of the company's promotional emails are considered; from content to subject lines to branding. There's no point crafting the perfect promotional email if your subject line isn't interesting enough to persuade consumers to open it, the number of consumers opening emails is closely monitored. The team can see which parts of the email are accessed the most and which areas need improvement. Emails can be timed to reach consumers at different times of the day, month and year depending on when these emails will be most effective. Email content can be personalised based on consumer buying patterns; content is therefore more likely to be relevant.

The company focuses heavily on their affiliates (e.g. price comparison, cashback and voucher sites) as these can increase site traffic and promote deals. The company deal with around 600 affiliates and these are split into the top 10 and the remaining sites which tend to be smaller. Dealing with affiliates is all about building relationships; this applies to the top companies but even more so with smaller affiliates. The team must reach an agreement which both the company and the affiliate are happy with; they usually work on a commission basis, receiving payment for each order placed via the affiliate. The team look into ways of increasing sales coming from affiliates and they're constantly on the look out for the latest sites and apps. A really interesting up and coming shopping aid is Monotote - I won't go into this now but look out for a post in the future when I've done a bit more research!

A massive factor that any successful company needs to consider is Google; I have to admit, I was completely uneducated on the way Google works. The company also consider the search engine Bing but on a much smaller scale as far less consumers use this engine, I'm going to focus on Google for now. It's really complicated and I'm definitely going to be researching into the business behind Google, but to simplify, Google is pretty much split between Paid and Organic search results. As you'd expect, Paid search results are the ads you see surrounding the regular search results - these regular results are referred to as Organic. Paid ads seem easier to understand; these are basically money focused and usually companies pay Google per click. For this reason, they filter out certain key words to avoid consumers clicking on the site by accident and push forward relevant words - every click costs money. All search results are monitored by Google and this is where it gets pretty damn complicated. Google require sites to follow their guidelines and by not doing so, sites can be dropped to the bottom of Google's search results. This sounds pretty simple right? Follow Googles rules and you'll be fine... except Google don't actually publicise their rules so it's a bit of a guessing game. Their are tools that can give you a rough idea of whether your site is complying with these rules, but you're never going to know for sure. As I mentioned, I've not researched this but it's something I feel it's crucial to have an understanding of how Google works as more and more of the fashion industry is moving online, it's something I never would have considered.

I'm hoping I'll be able to do more work with the Marketing team, it's easy to forget what your aiming for when your doing a part time job but this has really reminded how passionate I am about this field of work.

DG Millennials Fighting Back

Where better to protest a brand and their policies than at their own show? I'm assuming artist and model Raury was thinking the same thing. Dolce and Gabbana have been relying more and more on up and coming young people to promote their clothes and have been using less conventional models. This is a common trend in the fashion industry and appears to be effective; that is until these young people turn against the brand they're representing. These people have a huge following and as modelling isn't their primary career, they're a risk for any brand to hire. They're less likely to care if their modelling reputation is tarnished.

D&G have received huge amounts of criticism recently for dressing First Lady Melania Trump, the brand is said to be one of her favourites. This has personally put me right of D&G, it really shines an unflattering light on the brand. If they're happy to dress the wife of an insane person, it's only natural to worry about the brand's morals and ideologies. Choosing such a controversial figure to wear their clothes is bound to fill consumers minds with doubt. It also may have been worth considering choosing a brand representative who isn't internationally recognised for making atrocious outfit choices.

Naturally, in today's superficial society, people will still buy Dolce and Gabbana. But it will be interesting to see if this impacts the brands success over the coming years.

"When they tapped musician Raury for their Spring/Summer '18 men's runway show, however, they got more than just his 157k Instagram followers when the 21-year-old Atlanta singer staged a protest of the Italian fashion brand on their own runway. Before the finals bow, Raury removed his shirt to reveal the phrases "PROTEST DG," "GIVE ME FREEDOM," and "I AM NOT YOUR SCAPEGOAT" penned across his chest." 

- Cady Lang for Time Online, 2017

The Zara Lifestyle

I was in Manchester last week and, being on a spending ban, I thought it would be a fantastic idea to visit the Trafford Centre. Although my bank balance hates me, I had a great day. I find Zara as a brand really interesting, so I was embarrassingly excited to find a Zara Home store for the first time. I've never seen one before but it was exactly as you'd imagine, if anything I think Zara Home looked better than most of their clothes stores. If I had the money, my home would be filled with Zara's gorgeous home pieces. The whole store felt clean, light and universally influenced. 

Who's that girl

Doing a degree in promotion has ruined adverts for me, but in some ways it's made them really interesting. It sounds sad but I can't stop picking apart every advert I see; the choice of model in this advert for blu vaping kits shows that the brand are trying to widen their target market.

Met Gala 2017 Favourites

My social media feeds are filled right now with gorgeous images from this year's Met Gala. 

The Met Gala is an amazing event for fashion and this year did not disappoint! Here are some of my favourite looks! 

Changing The Game

I've been loving Zara's site recently; they've been producing editorial-style images, focusing on props and post-production, to promote their clothing and they're absolutely killing it. This style fits perfectly with the identity of the brand and it just makes their site so much more interesting.

I've never been a fan of Zara's site, I think their choice of models makes it difficult to imagine what their clothes would look like on my body shape. The brand are usually quite minimal with their imagery but I'm so happy to see they've upped their game; bringing some interesting visuals to the site without losing track of their brand identity. These are some of my favourites. 

https://www.zara.com/uk/

Hide your grinders

For a recent university project I was given the task of creating and exploring three ideas for an innovative fragrance product. In an attempt to have as much fun as possible with this project, I decided to go down a slightly illegal route for my first idea.

This idea offers a resolution to a problem which is apparently faced by the majority of young marijuana smokers; the smell. The idea: A candle which combats the smell of marijuana in an elegant yet gender neutral design, complete with a subtle, detachable, smell proof base compartment for storage.

Visual Inspiration: Buster and Punch candle holders.

With the substance itself illegal in the United Kingdom, the market is dominated by independent high street retailers and ‘dodgy’ online stores. This leaves a gap in the market for a recognised, trust worthy brand offering products catered to marijuana consumers.