Fashion Ads for Instagram
With the advent of social media, and especially the rise of Instagram, an entire new business model has opened up for extremely small, extremely niche fashion brands of all shapes and sizes. A market that was once monopolized by and limited to the offerings of Spencer’s has now ballooned massively to fulfill every fashion need that you could possibly have, every audience that the algorithm can detect.
The ideal method for advertising these businesses is also completely new, and in my opinion not yet fully discovered (though as we’ll see, there’s definitely inspiration to be taken from another massive, brand new social media trend).
On the one hand, Instagram reels are an essential tool, as they reach more non-followers (potential new customers) than any other type of organic post. On the other hand, professional video content of the quality used to advertise larger (legacy?) fashion brands, such as Gucci and Ralph Lauren, is extremely expensive. Dumping a full pro commercial budget on a 10 second Instagram reel ad is pretty stupid, especially when you’re a boutique Instagram niche fashion brand that runs a smaller shop on better margins and doesn’t have that kind of money to start with.
Right now a lot of these niche brands (usually run by one or two people, or a small team at most), use a lot of “homemade” iPhone footage, which helps to create a more authentic brand presence in the eyes of their younger audiences. Some of these brands also invest in semiprofessional videography, which looks better, but doesn’t seem to do much to increase engagement.
In a sense, these niche brands are trapped between a rock and a hard place. Selfies and DIY ads are free, and they do help you establish your brand as more relatable, but they still look unprofessional, they’re unlikely to catch someone’s eye, and potential new clients are likely to scroll right past them to see the next viral TikTok dance. You’ll quickly build a reputation for being a non-premium brand if you stick with them for too long, which will limit your ability to price your products. Professionally produced ads don’t create that problem, but can cost multiple thousands of dollars per second of final video. To add to the pain, professionally produced video generally takes so long to produce that there’s almost no way you can create enough of it to sustain the nonstop content needs of most social media algorithms, with these niche brands (the successful ones at least) moving on an insanely fast content cycle.
I’m going to try and outline a model for dealing with this problem here, to create a set of pointers for when and how to use both DIY and professional ads in your reels. Consider this a first pass.
How to Elevate an Instagram Brand
1. Avoid the Videography Trap
The middle ground I mentioned some brands doing before, where you go the superficially-more-efficient “semiprofessional” route of having someone with a high end mirrorless camera and gimbal film a jumbled set of slow-mo shots of your new outfit and then cut them together randomly over some music? That’s a waste of money, do it with an iPhone.
You either want your content to be completely free and authentic, or so good that it stops the scrolling, and for that you need professional planned ads which implement specific shock or clickbait-based strategies.
2. Stick to a Pareto Distribution
At maximum, only 20% of your video content should be high-production ads, and in all honestly you could drop that down to 1% and you’d be fine. The point of high end video is specifically to get new customers through the door. Current customers will love it, but they’re already here for your normal DIY content as well.
Spending too much money on good video will give you too much good video, which won’t hurt you, but it won’t give you any professionalism boost past a certain point. It’s a waste.
3. Copy Modern Influencers
They have their professional appearance and their high end movies/diss tracks/promos, but then also a much more organic DIY social media presence, maybe a YT Channel, where they’re not reading off a script, very obviously not giving a crap about production quality. The fancy videos are a flex, most of the time you stay relatable and entertaining, and when you’re relatable, you’re radically relatable (see Radical Authenticity).
4. HAVE A CAUSE!
This is just standard branding, but it’s much more essential for niche shops. You’re a fashion brand that sells one unique genre of clothing outside the norm, you need one and only one unique cause that your customers can feel really good about supporting, that they can relate to. Something in-line with your genre.
Once you’ve got it, you need to make it a core part of your branding. So a brand selling military style equipment NEEDS to also support a charity for disabled veterans, and they need to say that in their bio and post about it regularly. This is of MASSIVE importance to your target market, the new generation of millennials and zoomers (you know, the people who use Instagram).
This is essential, probably one of the most important points here. To a large swath of these generations, not having a charitable cause is an indicator that you’re overtly profit driven. They will call you things like “grifter” or “capitalist” (which is an insult for them). They will refuse to buy from you out of sheer political spite.
It’s important to note here that the normal political divides which you may think are separating out this market are actually not as strong in this generation as you’d expect. The words “conservative” and “liberal” don’t have as much meaning here. A hardcore leftist may still respect, appreciate, and even buy from that military-style brand if that brand is properly championing that veteran’s rights cause. The key is to really aggressively get away from the perception that your goals are all about you, and make your brand serve a higher purpose.
Oh and of course make high-production-quality video reel advertisements championing that cause. Email me at reese@danzermedia.com.
Final note on this: it’s extremely important to apply those same Radical Authenticity principles here as well. I myself am a part of the Zoomer Vanguard, and everything I just said applies to me and my decisions when working with your business. I’m a bit evil, so if you are completely profit driven then I’ll still deal with you as long as you’re honest about it, but don’t try and lie about championing a charitable cause out of sheer greed, or do the bare minimum “to say that you’re charitable” because you’ve just realized it’s a good idea. If that’s your plan, fix yourself to the point where you actually give a damn, then do it. Or simply look for a different charity you care about and will be happy to support with your revenues. The last thing we need is another influencer scammer who lies about their earnings going to the charity they pretend to support.
Anyways back to IG vids.
Bringing it All Together
Overall, the upshot is that you should aggressively target each side of the spectrum of production quality, and avoid the center entirely. You’re either making a beautiful, cinematic, attention grabbing ad, or you’re sitting on your couch pantsless, making an iPhone selfie video of your new shirt. Trying to make a beautiful cinematic attention grabbing ad on a shoestring budget while still sitting half-naked on your couch is a recipe for disaster (unless you’re hot).
Another note: one of the reasons these brands do well to copy influencers is because to some degree, these sorts of brands are influencers. A lot of these brands develop fanbases the same way influencers would, people who not only purchase from the brand regularly, but also see the brand as something that relates to their own personal life and struggles, pay close attention to the brand’s social media, and are emotionally invested in the brand’s success.
Professional video ads give these people the impression that the brand is succeeding, gaining status and repute, creating a TON of positive energy (which drives sales). When the niche cowboy fashion brand you’re a superfan of drops an ad that looks like it could have been commissioned by Balenciaga, you’re going feel much better about buying their product, and much more comfortable showing that ad to your friends.
Special thanks goes out to Live Forever Die Whenever for being a great lab rat and good sport to test this stuff out on. I wouldn’t have a hope at understanding these problems if not for them.