Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion PR & communications professionals, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for PR & communications professionals today:

1. How Brands Measure Buzz

Measurements like earned media value and media impact value are increasingly being used by brands to put a dollar value on conversation happening across media. The metrics are often used to demonstrate success (or slump) in the media, and investors and analysts consider them proof of a brand’s relevance. For an up-and-coming brand, an MIV or EMV on par with a much larger rival’s is something to brag about.

But they have limitations. To start, it’s not always clear how the dollar value of an EMV reading translates into real-world sales. And the metrics themselves don’t indicate the tone of the conversation around a brand. [...] Some even think these measures are encouraging brands to pursue ever-crazier stunts to ensure they go viral on social media and inflate their metrics.

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2. What Fashion Needs to Know About Lemon8

Lemon8, which ByteDance launched in Asia in 2020, became available to download in the US in February and is slated to get a wider marketing push next month. The app is designed as a hub for product and lifestyle recommendations, with a focus on areas like fashion, beauty, home and wellness. Though there’s been buzz, Lemon8 is in its early days, with just over 1 million downloads since March, according to data intelligence platform Apptopia.

The company has yet to devise a plan to get brands on board, and despite its genesis as a shopping platform, it doesn’t yet support links. Some marketing insiders say that many brands aren’t even aware of Lemon8. However there’s reasons for brands to be wary of diving into Lemon8 beyond its size, particularly as ByteDance is in the crosshairs of Congress, where lawmakers have threatened to ban TikTok. With that in mind, some brands may hold off on signing up for Lemon8 before it has amassed a large user base.

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3. Will Brands Ever Get Product Recommendations Right?

In a survey of more than 100 brands and retailers, only 20 percent of them said they customise product recommendations based on a customer’s purchase history, according to research from Manhattan Associates. Adoption has been slow because even with current technological advancements, implementing personalisation in e-commerce is complicated. Brands must either build algorithms that can predict customers’ behaviour from scratch, or use software platforms that can do the heavy lifting for them.

Brands are hopeful that AI software will be more affordable in the coming years. Andrew Bernstein, co-founder of Kinder Beauty, said the company will be quick to invest in such software when it’s more cost-effective. Until then, Kinder is gathering more of its own data, relying on customers to learn more about their preferences.

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4. How Uniqlo Finally Won Over Gen-Z

A large section of wall space of Uniqlo’s newest flagship store in Covent Garden is dedicated to the $20 crossbody bag in dozens of colourways. Nearby, there’s a display featuring a screenshot of the TikTok that started it all — Caitlin Phillimore demonstrated how many of her belongings she was able to fit into the bag. There’s also a case containing replicas of all of those items. Since Phillimore posted her ode to Uniqlo in April 2022, countless others have created “what’s in my bag” TikToks featuring the cross-body bag, and #uniqlobag has 70 million views on the platform.

Uniqlo doesn’t usually get this kind of buzz, particularly with Gen-Z consumers in North America and Europe. The brand’s newfound status with Gen-Z has been a major driver of sales and profit growth in the past year, according to Taku Morikawa, Uniqlo’s chief executive for Europe. Profit across the group increased by ¥30.9 billion ($226 million), with North America and Europe accounting for 80 percent of this gain, according to the February earnings report.

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5. Luxury’s Race to the Top

The top 5 companies in the Savigny Luxury Index account for close to 80 percent of the total sales generated by the 17 companies which populate the SLI and they own 142 out of the 190 brands covered by the index. LVMH is in a league of its own, accounting for 42 percent of SLI revenue, 45 percent of SLI enterprise value, and 75 of the 190 brands within the index. LVMH has also made by far the most acquisitions of SLI players, making 140 deals since 2000, more than triple that of its closest competitor, Kering.

Profitability is a key driver behind the race for scale in luxury. The top five companies in the SLI, which all have a turnover in excess of €10 billion, had an average EBITDA margin of 31.2 percent last year. That compares with an average EBITDA margin of 20.6 percent for the rest of the SLI.

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6. What Really Went Into Casablanca’s AI-Generated Marketing Campaign

AI has become a hot subject following the public release of tools such as the image generator DALL-E and chatbot ChatGPT. And Casablanca has joined a short but growing list of brands using it for campaign imagery. They enlisted Luke Nugent, a longtime fashion and art photographer who recently began creating AI editorials using the image generator Midjourney, marking the brand’s first steps into AI.

“It’s definitely a new medium and it’s not replacing photographers to me,” said founder Charaf Tajer. “For me, it’s a different world.” He emphasised the amount of creativity and work needed to produce the images. The process of researching and storyboarding was just like it would be for any other campaign, they said, and it still involved about 10 people contributing their ideas and feedback, including a set designer, lighting person, stylist and more.

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7. How New Beauty Brands Are Made

Ulta Beauty’s Muse is just one of many beauty accelerator programmes that have popped up to court emerging beauty brands. With similar initiatives such as Sephora Accelerate, Target Takeoff and Walmart Start, retailers have become more proactive in onboarding new lines to level the playing field for BIPOC founders and in hopes of finding the next big beauty breakout.It’s become common for young lines to participate in at least one of these programmes, if not several.

Eadem co-founders Marie Kouadio Amouzame and Alice Lin Glover were part of the Sephora’s 2021 Accelerate, and previously participated in Glossier’s grant initiative for Black-owned beauty lines as well as Black Innovators in Skin Health QuickFire Challenge, put on by Neutrogena and Johnson & Johnson Innovation. Even with more accelerators to choose from, no graduating brand has reached the cult indie status of a Tatcha or Drunk Elephant but there are some fast-rising brands like Topicals that passed through these programmes. While these accelerators promise relationship building, a boost to brand awareness and access to big retailers, most need to do more.

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8. ‘Culture Is the New Luxury’: Golden Goose CEO Unveils Strategy for Next Chapter

After reaching €500 million in annual sales, Golden Goose is rolling out partnerships with creators including Suki Waterhouse and Brian Woo in the lead up to opening a cultural centre in Venice next year. The brand joins Moncler and Louis Vuitton, who have reached beyond fashion to expand their audiences and reposition themselves as cultural brokers.

“Culture is the new luxury,” Golden Goose chief executive officer Silvio Campara told BoF ahead of the Venice launch. Activations across the city (which are set to include a branded vaporetto between Marghera and the Biennale, as well as billboards and sponsored bike-share service) will be designed to “help people discover art and discover what is Golden Goose.”

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