EXPLORING THE ITALIAN FASHION BLOGOSPHERE: A NETNOGRAPHIC APPROACH

Maria Esposito,Maria Rita Massaro,Mariangela Vecchiarini,Chiara Crudele 글로벌지식마케팅경영학회 2015 Global Fashion Management Conference Vol.2015 No.06

Research aim and objectives Fashion blogs are personal online diaries created in order to collect and spread information about fashion trends, products and brands for a community of followers. Since their advent, fashion bloggers became key players in the field of fashion (Rocamora, 2011). Some fashion blogs achieved so much fame and notoriety to establish themselves as crucial reference points for consumers, fundamental spaces for “the production and circulation of fashion discourse” (ibidem, p.409). This exponentially growing phenomenon revolutionized the world of fashion and the concept of fashion industry itself: fashion bloggers have been included in the institutional system of fashion, beside the traditional media industry and considered together with the fashion journalism (Pedroni, 2014). The relevance of this research field is proved by the fashion bloggers’ copious and promising revenue. It is estimated that the most successful bloggers have incomes which soar into the million-dollar range annually (Blalock, 2014). According to Forbes (2015), Chiara Ferragni, the owner of ‘The Blonde Salad’ which became the Harvard’s Business School case study, is on track to take in $8 million in revenues this year. The most of the revenue comes not only from website advertisement but from celebrity appearances, partnership with luxury brands and bloggers’ handbag, shoes and clothes line collections (Keinan et al., 2015). However, despite it constitutes an extremely appealing domain for marketing studies (Kim & Jin, 2006), research on fashion blogging is still incipient (Rocamora, 2011). As the bloggers are brands themselves, the aim of this research is to deepen the fragmentary understanding of this phenomenon through the adoption of a personal brand perspective, i.e. personal branding. In order to achieve this aim, the following objectives have been set: - How do the fashion bloggers develop and turn their personal identity and value into a personal brand? - What are their communication strategy? - What are their interaction strategies? Personal Branding: an overview The expression “personal branding” was introduced for the first time by Tom Peters (1997) in his article emblematically entitled “The brand called you”. In his contribution, considered to be the manifesto of personal branding, Peters points out the dramatic changes that affected the labour market, suggesting that the only way for people to succeed in a highly competitive scenario is to transform themselves into Chief Executive Officers of their own company and promote themselves learning from some of the most successful brands as Nike, Coke, Pepsi (ibidem). Personal branding (also known as self-branding, cf. Kaputa, 2003) is based on the idea that it is possible to apply to people the same marketing and branding principles originally developed for products and companies (Sheperd, 2005). It can be defined as a process by which individuals recognize their strengths and uniqueness and promote themselves to a target audience. In other words, building a personal brand means to identify what makes a person unique and different from their competitors or peers, but it also refers to the ability to communicate, in an effective way, your own source of competitive advantage (Centenaro and Sorchiotti, 2013; Kaputa, 2012; Labrecque, Markos & Milne, 2011; Shepherd, 2005). Although Peter’s (1997) original idea of personal branding was more generally based on individuals facing the “off-line” labour market, this approach can be used also to explain some “on-line” phenomenon. New technologies, in fact, created computer mediated environments, resulting in virtual spaces where people can present and express themselves using digital traces (Schau and Gilly, 2003). Research Methodology Using in-depth interviews and netnography, this work examines how a group of popular Italian fashion bloggers managed to build their personal brands and grow their value. A multi-methods research based on the combination of no-structured interviews (conducted both face-to-face and through Instant Messaging channels) and a netnographic approach1 was used to analyze the fashion blogging phenomenon. The in-depth interviews involved four Italian fashion bloggers selected with a snowball sampling. These interviews, performed in the explorative phase of the research, in addition to provide a preliminary exploration of the fashion blogging scenario and first empirical evidence, favoured the development of categories of analysis that have been successively deepened through the netnographic approach. The netnographic analysis, started in April and still in progress, has been applied to fifteen Italian fashion blogs, selected among the 100 most followed blogs indicated by Les Cahiers Fashion Marketing, an online fashion marketing magazine. Among them, the blogs selection was performed following the criteria suggested by the literature about netnography (Kozinets, 2010): the presence of relevant information related to the research focus and questions; the presence of recent and regular communication and a large interactivity between the blogger and other participants2; the occurrence of detailed and descriptively rich data. Drawing lessons from the literature (ibidem)3, data collection was performed trough a non-participant observation approach, that has allowed researchers to collect data in a completely unobtrusive manner and work on naturally occurring texts, not distorted in any way by the analyst’s presence. The collected data included both bloggers’ posts and audience’s comments. Moreover, in addition to textual material, visual and audiovisual data have been collected and analyzed. During the analysis, two different processes of netnographic analysis, analytical coding and hermeneutic interpretation, have been usefully combined and performed. In the following paragraph, the first results obtained, until now, through a combined analysis of excerpts of interviews and netnography will be shown. Results Preliminary research evidence shows that the success of a fashion blogger depends mainly on: • A clear definition and development of a personal identity; • The effort to coherently convey the personal identity through an effective management of different communication and interaction tools; • The development of a network that can maximize blogger’s visibility and notoriety. Identity and value dimension: self-presentation strategies Blogs are usually presented as spaces in which an authentic personal style can be expressed. Analyzing the bloggers’ entries, it is possible to recognize how the concept of personal style plays a fundamental role, representing the main element on which the blogger’s identity is based (Kulmala, Mesiranta and Tuominen, 2013). The most important tool for the expression of the blogger’s personal style is posting the outfit of the day: i.e. an outfit worn on a particular day or during a particular event or occasion, based on the combination of different brands and products. As bloggers and readers’ attention is not focused on specific products and brands, but, rather, on how single pieces of clothing are assembled and combined together, every daily outfit works as a style statement expressing and reinforcing the blogger’s personal identity and, at the same time, provides inspiration and identification by his followers (Pihl, 2014). Communication strategy: style and tools The netnographic analysis shows how the starting level of the published contents is very amateur, where the bloggers usually lack a well-defined communication strategy. However, observing the sampled blogs through a diachronic netnographic approach, it is possible to recognize a gradual change involving both the writing style and the visual elements. Texts became better-finished, effective, studied in detail, with continuous intertextual references to older posts about similar or related topics. The products or brands presentation and description are never de- contextualized, but always inserted within a narrative structure. In other words, fashion bloggers make use of the potentials offered by visual storytelling, presenting products as a part of bloggers’ daily life, always intertwined with bloggers’ autobiographical information (Rocamora, 2011). Simple and interesting personal stories are displayed in order to allow readers to identify themselves with the blogger and his core values. Moreover, pictures are taken in a very professional way, paying close attention to every element as light, colours, and locations. In addition to the daily update of the blog, bloggers’ communication strategy embraces the logics of a pervasive personal branding by managing different platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram in order to build a strong and coherent diffused identity on the net. Interaction strategies: network and partnerships The relational dimension involves three main types of relations. First, with readers: bloggers try to ensure audience’s engagement and loyalty, encouraging readers to express their opinions about the proposed outfit; provide customised advice and suggestions; promote their active participation through contests and giveaways. On the other hand, users use comments to support the blogger’s activity, show their approval for the proposed outfits or suggest modifications and variations to the blogger’s proposal. Secondly, the relational dimension concerns the connections with other bloggers: fashion blogs define together a community of style (Pihl , 2014), a real network characterized by continual mutual references among its nodes. It is especially through the tools of comments that bloggers promote each other, posing at the bottom of the comments links to their blog and inviting other readers to visit it. Finally, the relational dimension concerns the relationships between bloggers and fashion brands. The analysis of the in-depth interviews puts in evidence that collaboration dynamics frequently established between fashion brands and bloggers can take different forms: from inviting the blogger to choose specific brand products and give them visibility through a review on the blog, to invite the blogger to take part as a guest or model in a fashion parade or new collection presentation or in a brand photo shoot. These forms of cooperation can take more structured forms and transform into more complex co- branding strategies: there many examples of bloggers that, in partnership with well- known brands, realize and launch limited or special products edition. Implications and limitations According to our preliminary results, the success of a fashion blogger depends mainly on his ability to transform the blogging activity into a personal brand. In some cases, the branding process reaches its highest fulfilment when the blogger launches and promotes a personal collection resulting in an independent fashion brand. The interest in the phenomenon for marketers mainly derives from the different forms of collaboration that can be established between bloggers and fashion companies. For bloggers, those partnerships represent important occasions to enrich their portfolio and increase their reputation and credibility by the target audience. On the other hand, fashion companies can use blogs as a tool to collect decisive information about consumers (cf. Kulmala et al., 2013), exploit the visibility and reputation of fashion bloggers and benefit of an extremely powerful communication means. In fact, as bloggers use their own language, their messages are considered to be more direct, intimate and authentic by readers. As this study has an explorative nature, it is not aimed at generalizing its results, but rather at deepening the knowledge about a still underdeveloped and uncertain phenomenon, i.e. the Italian fashion blogging. However, the research has been performed following the evaluative criteria proposed by literature about netnography (Kozinets, 2010), i.e. coherence, rigour, verisimilitude and innovation.