That’s why it’s important for fashion brands, retailers and etailers to be competitive in this key online field, especially when recessionary pressures make competition in the fashion sector so fierce.

So we read with interest a new piece of research from digital agency I Spy into the performance of the sector’s protagonists in both the fields of natural and paid for search.

Their methodology for their natural search analysis was to look at 72 generic fashion terms – like ‘boots’, ‘cardigan’ and ‘lingerie’ – and then to rank the top 30 websites by the number of keywords they held a top 10 position for. The results are below.

Top spot was claimed by ASOS, with a remarkable 66 ‘top 10s’, followed by Amazon and Debenhams. On the whole, the list was dominated by etailers, department stores and high street retailers, with fashion brands and luxury players notable by their absence, with the exception of Net-a-Porter at position 7.

Of course, a page 1 ranking is good, but any fashion retailer worth their salt will be aiming for a no.1 ranking – estimated to generate up to 40% for the traffic for any given SERPs page. I Spy’s report also ranked the top 30 websites by the number of no.1 rankings and ASOS triumphed once again with New Look in 2nd place.

Of course, for brands that struggle to compete in natural search, paid search offers a solution. Here, the study split the generic terms into 3 broad categories – womenswear, menswear and luxury – to see how the various players in the market performed.

For womenswear, etailer Marisota topped the list with 83% coverage of terms in the category. On the whole, etailers dominated again – perhaps a reflection of how much harder they have to work online to compensate for their lack of an offline presence – although niche brands such as Boden and Anthropologie also performed strongly.

The menswear sector was dominated by Marks & Spencer with 66% coverage, followed by Premierman and Amazon. Reiss also performed surprisingly well in this category, as did TM Lewin.

The luxury category was surprisingly led by Mainline Menswear, and unsurprisingly followed by that most digitally savvy of luxury brands, Burberry. Discount retailers such as BrandAlley and Outnet showed themselves keen to grab a slice of this market, as did young fashion etailer Very.

The main learnings from this study have been the notable absence of any significant number of fashion brands in general, and premium and luxury fashion brands in particular. In general, both natural and paid search results have been dominated by etailers, department stores and high street retailers.

Whilst clearly all fashion players have something to learn from the natural search performance of ASOS, premium and luxury brands in particular can use the argument that the study, by focusing on generic terms, biased the results against them. Surely, it makes sense for them to concentrate on nicher, longer tail terms to achieve the required return on their search investment?

This may be true but generic searches often represent the start of the purchase process. Brands that ‘opt out’ of this market may be missing a golden opportunity to place themselves in the consideration set right at the top of the purchase funnel. Hence, targeting generic terms may not deliver immediate sales, but by generating awareness at the beginning of a consumer’s purchase decision, they can be effective in making a balanced search strategy much more effective.

As we’ve outlined previously, consumers are increasingly embracing out of home creatives that offer interactivity via smartphones.

A recent survey by Clear Channel and Posterscope backs up that finding.  Their study found that 23% of consumers had interacted with a poster advert using their smartphone – 2nd only to print adverts (28%). And they’re not only interacting – the survey found that they were enjoying the experience too (84% of those that had interacted) and recommending it to their friends too (72%).

At present, the dominant interactive technology is QR codes, with 2/3s of the sample having used them. This compared to only 20% who had used mobile barcode scanners (in 2nd place) and 7% that had used Bluetooth (in 3rd) to interact with ads.

However, one of the least used interactive mobile technologies, NFC – only 3% of the sample had used it to interact with advertising - is the one which arguably holds most potential for outdoor advertisers.

NFC, or Near Field Communications, is a wireless technology that allows individuals  to make transactions and exchange digital content with other NFC-enabled devices.  In 2011, just 5% of phones were NFC-enabled but a recent report released by MarketResearch.com predicted that by 2016 this figure would be up to 50%. 

The other problem with NFC is that it’s very little known – 2/3s of consumers don’t know if their phone has NFC and even 60% of smartphone owners who’s phone has NFC are unaware.

So why does a technology with low levels of penetration, low levels of awareness and low levels of usage offer such potential to out of home advertisers? Well, for a couple of reasons.

First of all, there’s the ease of use.  Just by tapping their NFC-enabled phone to the NFC-enabled poster when invited to do so, consumers can carry out a variety of actions from downloading vouchers to getting directions (e.g. to a local store) or liking a brand’s Facebook page. No need to download apps or take photographs with a phone camera as for QR codes.

Secondly, NFC is a technology that offers this potential almost exclusively to out of home as an advertising medium.  Digital out of home sites can be NFC-enabled – TVs and newspapers cannot.

But NFC’s greatest potential lies in its usage as a wireless payment technology. Combine this with NFC-enabled poster sites and you have an interesting possibility – the ability to purchase direct from a poster site. In fact, 57% of the Clear Channel/Posterscope sample would be prepared to purchase products from a NFC-enabled poster using their smartphone.

When this subject was further probed in the survey, there didn’t seem to be a product category that consumers wouldn’t consider buying from a poster – including clothing, beauty/personal grooming products and even flights. In fact, many saw the convenience of purchasing ‘on the go’ and then collecting the product in store or having it delivered.

However, before this vision is reached, NFC does have to overcome some barriers, and not just its lack of awareness. 30% of the sample wouldn’t use NFC-enabled poster sites – mainly because they weren’t convinced by the utility but also because of fears over security.

Nonetheless, NFC does offer some interesting possibilities to premium and luxury advertisers, not least the opportunity to turn billboard sites into microstores that deliver a tangible commercial return. There are some significant barriers to overcome before adoption becomes significant – even amongst affluent consumers who tend to be at the forefront of the adoption of new technologies – but for premium and luxury brands, NFC does appear to be a technology to watch very closely.

Their study found that 63% of affluent smartphone owners purchased products or services on their mobile device – with 5% purchasing daily, 17% weekly, 27% monthly and 14% annually.

However, despite the fact that 81% of the affluent smartphone owners in the sample had downloaded an app, only 12% had downloaded a luxury brand’s app. There certainly seems to be a opportunity here for luxury brands – not only to entice their target market to download their apps, but to take advantage of their propensity to purchase using their mobile too.

So what could the reason be for this low level of penetration?

Well, the survey suggests that luxury brands simply may not be giving affluent consumers what they want when it comes to mobile app faetures.  Affluent consumers’ main expectations of a luxury mobile app was the ability to gain access to discounts – 46% of the sample expected loyalty schemes, 45% early access to sales and 38% access to exclusive discounts for those who downloaded the app. Features such as exclusive updates on new products and services (39%) and early access to new releases (36%), whilst important, where further down the priority list.

In addition, 40% of the sample said they were interested in apps that would provide a secure and convenient means for making luxury purchases. Not only that but 72% of those affluents who shop via their device said there was no upper limit to what they would be willing to spend on an m-commerce purchase.

So for those luxury brand marketers searching for a business case for a mobile app need look no further – enable it for m-commerce and ally this functionality with discount features, and you’ll be giving the affluent market what they’re looking for.

And for those of you that think this only applies to the US market – think again. Although the US tends to lead the way in technology innovation and adoption, when it comes to smartphones and their usage, the UK affluents are at worst neck and neck and probably slightly ahead of their US counterparts. As a result, m-commerce enabled luxury apps are undoubtedly an opportunity here to.

It’s questions like these which Stickyeyes has attempted to answer in a  new study into the social media strategies of 5 of the UK’s top fashion retailers – ASOS, Topshop, New Look, River Island and Boohoo. 

Social engagement – defined as the quality of interaction with potential customers – was measured via 5 metrics: repeat brand engagement, positive sentiment, Facebook ‘Talking About This’, content engagement and retweets.  This was combined with social volume – a combination of audience size, volume of content and mention volume – to determine an overall social media scorecard. The score for both metrics for each of the 5 brands studied are below:

As you can see from the chart above, the best volume performers were ASOS and Topshop – with ASOS performing best overall when the volume and engagement metrics were combined.  Both brands have large Facebook and Twitter audiences and are achieving a high level of mentions. Topshop was commended for its Twitter usage, having the highest volume of followers and the most extensive Twitter reach. However, Stickyeyes’ study suggests that there’s an imbalance in Topshop’s strategy – their success in achieving high social volume is not being matched by their social engagement stats.

 In fact, the brand that was commended for having the most engaged audience was New Look, despite having smaller fanbases than both ASOS and Topshop. As you can see from the above graph, despite being outscored by their bigger rivals for repeated brand engagement and retweets, New Look, which puts more focus on its Facebook page, performed better than them for positive customer sentiment and Facebook Talking About This.

So what’s the secret to a successful social engagement strategy? Here, the study looked at a range of engagement tactics and categorised them into 8 broad categories: price promotions (discounts, sales), product promotions (new stock, new seasons), competitions, customer support, service offerings (free delivery etc), blogger outreach, loyalty scheme related and user-generated.

As you can see from the above graph, price promotion was the most common engagement tactic across all 5 retailers, with Boohoo in particular relying on it heavily. Price promotions were also the most effective tactic for generating positive customer sentiment – unsurprising considering this is the most common reason consumers follow brands on social media in the first place.  Price promotions combined with imminent deadlines e.g. 20% discount for the next 3 hours, were found to be the most effective way to generate retweets too.

Competitions, on the other hand, were rarely used – River Island being their main advocate – and were found to be unlikely to generate positive customer sentiment, probably because of the low odds of winning – although they were the 2nd most effective strategy for achieving retweets.

However, the brands that were most successful at ensuring high levels of engagement - ASOS and New Look – were those that had balanced strategies with a particularly strong emphasis on proactive customer support  - ASOS Here to Help on both Twitter and Facebook was sited as a prime example.

Their emphasis on customer support helped both brands to manage brand sentiment to the extent that they both achieved the lowest proportions of negative sentiment for customer service (see chart above). New Look’s performance in this regard was well ahead of its rivals.

Perhaps this is the key to New Look’s success in social media engagement. People are more likely to engage with a brand they like and a brand that takes a proactive, honest and visible approach to customer support is going to be well liked. This may then underpin the success of their other social media activity.

If you’d like to see the full report, just drop us a line at info@creamuk.com and we’ll send you a copy.

It’s certainly exciting times in the media digital landscape as more and more print titles jump on the tablet wagon. Admittedly, many jumped far too soon and are having to slowly retrace their steps and reassess their online offering. Stylist on the other hand (and Shortlist for that matter) took their sweet time to ensure the technology was available for them to get it 100% right. Will their patience have paid off? Time will tell. 

The edition, which works equally well on tablets and smartphones, is available for free on Apple as well as Android devices. It uses Google Currents, an exciting new technology platform which only recently launched in the UK.  Once registered, readers will have access to content from each week’s printed version and across the week Stylist will be adding some of the best content from stylist.co.uk to ensure that the edition is refreshed on a daily basis. In a few weeks they’ll start to open the format up to advertisers, though to start with the offering will be purely editorial as they endeavour to successfully bed the service in. 

To download your own go to either the App Store or Google Play for Android devices and type in Google Currents, then search for Stylist or ShortList and join the 1,872 subscribers who’ve already signed up.

Meet the new monthly glossy freebie that will be circulating in London this month, Amuse. The magazine will be published by Amuse Media, an independent media company based in Covent Garden.

It’s set to be an exciting launch, taking the likes of Stylist and ES Magazine head on. Are we sceptical? Well of course we are. Although the flat plan looked beautiful, this is not an easy place to be. Londoners are at saturation point with the amount of paper being shoved into their hands on their way to work and on their way home. How much more print media can Londoners possibly consume before they, well … explode?

But perhaps I am being overly cynical, British fashion is currently on a high and everyone wants more, more, more. Sasha Slater, former editor of ES Magazine, has taken on the role of editor and Stephanie Hirschmiller, former editor of HarpersBazaar.co.uk, has assumed the role of deputy editor. 

Amuse will offer a mixture of arts and culture, fashion and beauty, shopping and lifestyle, all with a focus on what’s happening right now at the heart of the city.

Overseeing the beauty pages will be Arabella Preston and Bethan Cole, who have been appointed to the roles of beauty editor and beauty columnist respectively.

Other columnists include Sadie Frost and Iris Law, Vogue’s Lauren Cochrane, the restaurateur Rowley Leigh, wine critic Victoria Moore, interior designer Kelly Hoppen, and fashion designers David Koma and Alessandra Rich.

A distribution of 100,000 copies will be handled by uniformed merchandising teams handing the magazine to commuters at 75 central London tube stations, and 20,000 copies will be available for self-selection in a variety of health clubs, spas, city offices and first class airport lounges.

The launch issue will include interviews with Gwyneth Paltrow, Stella McCartney, Norah Jones and Selfridges’ Alannah Weston.
Alongside print, the offering will include digital and social media, as well as an app due to launch in September.

What are the positives? Glossy, and comes out the last Monday of every month to coincide with pay day. London only with good fashion and beauty credentials (if the editors are anything to go by).

Downsides? Do the consumers care? Yes, women love Stylist, are they looking for a monthly fix in addition to their weekly. Time can only tell…

That’s according to the latest ‘Interactive Europe’ survey released by CBS Outdoor and compiled by Kantar Media.

The quantitative and qualitative survey, which consisted of 9,000 respondents across 6 European markets, including the UK, found that 25-34 year old smart device owners were the most enthusiastic about interactive outdoor – 74% would consider interacting with an outdoor ad.  18-24s were the next most keen to engage with out of home advertisers (72%) followed by 35-44s (70%).  The least enthusiastic were the 45-54s, although almost 2/3s would still consider interaction. 

So the market is ripe for engaging with brands through their out of home advertising, but what technology should advertisers use to facilitate this?  And what sort of engagement should they be offering? 

The answer to the first of these questions isn’t clear cut. 

The most well-known technology amongst consumers was the QR code, with almost 40% being aware of it. However, only 13% had ever scanned one.  Promotional text codes in ads showed marginally higher levels of usage (c15%) but lower levels of awareness. 

New and cutting edge technologies that marketers often use to generate PR column inches were found to have both low levels of awareness and usage.  Hence, less than 15% of the sample were aware of augmented reality ads and less than 5% had used them. For the emerging mobile technology of NFC, the figures were even lower – just over 5% awareness and less than 2% usage.

In fact, the most common action by smartphone and tablet owners when consuming out of home advertising was going online to get more information, which almost 1/3 of them had done according to the survey. 

However, simply linking a QR code or URL to a mobile-optimized site is likely to create disappointment amongst those who do choose to interact. The qualitative part of the survey found that mobile consumers wanted some form of reward for their actions – either in monetary terms, such as accessing online discount vouchers, or in terms of entertainment.  Clearly, smart out of home advertisers will offer a route for consumers to access functional information about the product or brand advertised but also a means for the consumer to engage with them in other ways.  

The growth of smartphone and tablet ownership has revolutionised offline advertising – bringing the mass audiences that traditional media can deliver but enabling advertisers to offer them the interactivity of digital media. And out of home offers a great fit for this new type of interactivity when targeting upmarket audiences due to it’s highly targeted and interruptive nature. 

However, no interactive mobile technology is dominant so when planning their campaigns, advertisers need to very clearly define their audience and their goals to understand which is appropriate. For example, a campaign aimed at distributing as many mobile discount vouchers as possible to encourage trial might be best to use promotional text codes. For one where takeup isn’t as key as word of mouth generation, more immersive technologies such as augmented reality could be appropriate. 

What is clear is that advertisers who’s only calls to action on a out of home ad are a Facebook logo and a mobile URL are missing an opportunity.

Harpers Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Tatler all saw marked declines in the readership figures of -14%, -16% and -24% versus the same period in 2010. Worse still, the figures for their ABC1 readers fell even more steeply, by -16%, -18% and -26% respectively. The one shining light was Vogue, which continued to power on in the readership stakes, growing it’s readership by +8% overall and by +4% amongst the ABC1 audience.

These figures are particularly interesting because they contrast with the recently released circulation figures for these titles released by ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation). These show all 4 titles largely flat or slightly up in terms of circulation year on year.

This may be down to statistical inaccuracy – the NRS figures are based on interviews of 36,000 people, whereas ABCs are a count of every copy distributed. The smaller the circulation, the more likely mistakes will begin to creep into the NRS’s figures. Or it could be that whilst core circulation is remaining strong for these titles, the number of readers per issue is declining as the audience beyond the core active purchasers have less desire to borrow a copy.

It certainly serves to highlight the extent to which different magazines in the sector are passed on. For example, Vogue has a readership of 1.3m, more than 6 times it’s circulation. Compare that to Harpers Bazaar, the number 2 circulating title in the sector, with less than 1.5 readers per edition.

Across the rest of the magazine sector, the NRS figures largely reflect the trends we identified from the recent ABCs. Hence, the lad’s mag sector shows sharp declines – of all Nuts, Zoo, FHM and Loaded are in readership freefall, with readers falling between -20 and -30% between 2010 and 2011. However, the fitness titles, Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness, are both holding up well in terms of readers – this despite showing circulation falls in the latest ABCs. And the more cerebral titles – GQ, Esquire, The Week and The Economist – are either holding their own or powering ahead, particularly the latter 2 titles.

Some sectors of the gossip market seemed to have stemmed the falls too – Closer, OK and Hello only saw single figure %age drops in readers. However others – namely Heat, Now and Reveal – saw double figure %age drops continuing. And the home interest sector was a mixed bag but largely saw readership increases, with a few notable exceptions (an -8% year on year fall for House Beautiful).

We’ve included a full list of results for January to December 2011 below. 

According to the publishers, the magazine’s editorial content will be based around the growing seasons and will celebrate the joy of the garden, simple seasonal kitchen food, traditional British crafts and the wonder of nature and the countryside.

The magazine is aimed at finding an audience among educated women, aged 35 and upwards, with an interest in the countryside and nature. This bears no surprise, especially after IPC’s extensive research on generation ‘Y-Not’. This detailed study confidently stated that women between the ages of 40-60 have incredibly strong buying power and are the main influencers in all household decisions. The research confirmed that women in this target group are not the misperceived (by some), meek and mild housewives, but strong working women in top positions with a rather large disposable income – “Ignore them at your peril”.

Launched on 18 April, it will have a print run of 170,000 and a cover price of £3.90. There will also be a website, landscapemagazine.co.uk.

The most likely competitors for this title will be the likes of Country Living, Jamie (the vanity title published by Jamie Oliver), Coast and, with a little more flattery to LandScape on a numbers level at least, Easy Living and Good Housekeeping.

Bauer has forged two partnerships for the launch, firstly with The Times. A 32-page sampler of LandScape was distributed with copies of the newspaper on Saturday 14 April. Secondly, the magazine is being supported by English Heritage, which will promote the launch issue among its 1m-plus members.

The latest research from Deloitte has found that smartphone penetration in the UK is nearing 50% and tablet penetration 6%. In addition, mobile browsing is on the rise – in Q3 2011 ComScore found that 46% of mobile users had accessed a mobile site and 44% had used a mobile app. And these are figures for the population as a whole – affluents will be well ahead of these trends.

So it’s not surprising that Professor Scott Galloway and his colleagues at luxury thinktank L2, well known for rating luxury brands on their digital competence, have focused their latest study on the emerging field of mobile marketing.

In compiling their Mobile IQ report, L2 used a similar methodol0gy to their well known Digital IQ studies.  Ratings were based on weighted scores for 4 different mobile marketing categories – mobile sites (40%), mobile apps (30%), mobile marketing (15%) and innovation and integration (15%). Those with a score of over 140 received ‘Genius’ status, 110-139 ‘Gifted’, 90-109 ‘Average’, 70-89 ’Challenged’ and less than 70 ‘Feeble.’

So how did the top 100 luxury brands measure up? 

Well, only 4 out of the 100 - Sephora, Nordstrom, Macy’s and Net-a-Porter – were awarded ‘Genius’ status, as compared to 11 times as many who were rated as ‘Feeble’.  Most of the problem was that luxury brands had yet to fully embrace mobile rather than a lack of competence in mobile strategy execution. However, Galloway and his team  did level some specific criticisms at luxury brands and their approach to mobile marketing.

Mobile Sites

It appears that luxury brands have learnt their lesson from their slow response to the digital revolution – 2/3s of those in the survey had a mobile optimised site and 67% of those sites were m-commerce enabled. 

However,the L2 study criticised most of the sites on offer for not offering a device agnostic experience – that is, not offering all of the functionality of the main site in their mobile site. Common features found to be omitted included videos, product reviews and user ratings.

Given the vastly different browsing experiences between iPad and smartphone, and the growing evidence of the iPad’s importance in ecommerce, it was surprising to find that the provision of iPad-specific experiences lagged badly. Only seven of the 100 brands in the study had an iPad-specific site. Of the remainder, 11% were directing iPad users to their main mobile site and 82% were sending them to their main site, where full functionality was missing in almost 1 in 5 cases because of the use of Adobe Flash. 

Mobile Applications

70% of the top 100 brands had at least one mobile application, however most of the apps on the market were criticised for lacking utility and ’stickiness’.  Less than 1/3 of all apps produced were commerce-enabled and features such as notifications, geolocation and
integration with the phone’s camera and gyroscope were rarely encountered.  

In addition, just 16% of the sample had developed an experience for the unique features and functionality of the iPad.  A more common practice was to replicate the same app across both smartphone and iPad.

Mobile Marketing

Although 78% of the brands in the study engaged in email marketing, only 24% had links to mobile-optimized versions of their email
content despite the fact that consumers are opening 23% of their emails on their mobile devices.

In addition,  integration of mobile offerings was poor. Just 18% of brands with mobile sites were found to have links to their mobile  properties and only 19% of the brands with mobile apps include download links to the corresponding app store.

In the paid mobile search field, luxury brands were found to be lagging too. In the US in October 2011, mobile accounted for approximately 15% of all clicks and 13% of all impressions on Google. During December, it is estimated that those figures rose to 25% and 20% respectively.  Despite this, few luxury brands were observed to be taking proactive steps in this field.  Of search returns rendered on a mobile device, only 13% of brands in the sample had links to any element of their mobile presence on the first page of Google results. Just over a third of the brands had store locators and/or maps returned in their results.

So which brands should luxury marketers be looking up to in this emerging field? LVMH’s Sephora secured top spot in the study and was praised for its long term and sustained investment in mobile, including a feature rich mobile site and distinct apps for the iPhone and iPad.

Other brands to earn praise for their mobile initiatives were Calvin Klein for the mobile element of the ‘CK One’ campaign, YSL for their ColorMirror virtual make up app and Salvatore Ferragamo for their iPad site.

It’s the contention of Professor Galloway and his team that mobile competence is inextricably linked to shareholder value and luxury brands that lag will suffer in the long term.   

With more people forecast to access the internet wirelessly via a mobile device than from a wired connection within 3 years, and mobile commerce sales set to quintuple over the next 5 years, it’s hard to disagree.

Although this latest study from L2’s proves that most luxury brands have a long way to go before truly harnessing the power of mobile, our advice would be not to panic. We’d advise embarking on a course of structured low cost testing so that by 2013 you understand how mobile can work for you and how it might drive business.