When Tommy Met Gigi
In the last 3-5 years, there has been a consistent trend of high-end fashion brands repositioning themselves to appeal to a younger market. To meet this business objective many brands have begun utilizing influencer marketing strategy. We’ve seen it successfully done with Calvin Klein’s user-generated campaign #InMyCalvins, and many brands have followed suit since.One of the most exciting rebranding campaigns taking place in fashion is Tommy Hilfiger's collaboration with supermodel and social media influencer GiGi Hadid.
In 2016 the iconic Hilfiger brand set out to increase market share amongst millennial retail consumers, and brought on model/social media influencer GiGi Hadid to do so. A few years ago if you were to ask millennial consumers how they felt about Tommy Hilfiger they wouldn’t have had much to say, but that all changed when Tommy meet GiGi.
The Tommy X GiGi collection began in 2016 and consisted of four seasons with a focus on digital strategy. The Hilfiger brand decided in 2016 to launch “TommyNow” with the goal of allowing consumers to buy products instantly from the runway with the use of social media. The success of Tommy Hilfiger’s new digital strategy is largely due to the brand's use of social media influencers. The use of influencer strategy was on full display in the grand finale of the TommyxGiGi collection during their fashion show on Feb 25th in Milan. The show was live streamed on Instagram to Hilfiger’s 6 million followers not to mention the reach of the star-studded roster of influencers.
The show kicked off with GiGi Hadid showing off her own designs, before welcoming her influencer friends and family. GiGi alone brought her 38.6 million instagram followers to the Instagram live stream, but that was simply the beginning. Also in the show was GiGi’s close friend Hailey Baldwin with her 11.2 million followers, Bella Hadid with 17 million followers, Cameron Dallas with 20.8 Million and Diddy’s youngest son Christian Combs who previously worked with Dolce and Gabbana. To fully understand the power of influencer strategy let's look at the numbers.
The use of Hilfiger’s strategic media partnership with Instagram has paid off in a major way during the duration of the ‘TommyNow’ partnership with GiGi Hadid. With the help of Instagram’s e-commerce features the brand has seen substantial growth.Tommy Hilfiger’s Chief Brand Officer Avery Bakery reports a 75% increase in female millennial visitors to tommy.com(www.campaignlive.com).This increase in digital traffic lead to an over $900 million dollar increase in sales for the brand. If there’s one take away from the success of Hilfiger’s rebranding campaign it’s the power of social media platforms on influencing consumer behavior.