Lifestyle brands are so my style

Brand Instagrams.  These accounts are commonplace, and there are virtually every consumer brand has some sort of social media presence attached to it.  Many of these brands strictly post content only related to their products or services, while other brands take the persona of a lifestyle brand.

What does this mean exactly? A lifestyle brand is one that posts more than just their products or services, and rather focuses on on brand content.  Some examples can be checked out below.

Both of these brands are clothing brands, but these two posts don't make it super obvious.  While most people may think, "this has to be hurting their brand", this turns out not to be the case.  

Posting this specific type of content turns the brand into something that sells strictly products to a complete lifestyle.  Consumers look towards these brands for inspiration, and loyal followers hope to have more than just the brands products and services.  These loyal consumers want to emulate everything that the brand does, and by posting content that is on brand this want becomes more attainable.  

Not only does this represent a lifestyle, this type of content does something special for the overall aesthetic of the brand page.  Creating and maintaining a page that is appealing to the eye is important for a brand's overall following.  It is a natural human want to have something that is appealing to the eye.  Posting this type of content breaks up the content and provides a necessary flow.  

This type of content also allows these brands to follow the 80/20 Rule.  This rule states the importance of giving consumers 80% of the content that they want to see and 20% of content can be call to action.  Providing content that goes beyond the goods and services that a brand has is important to the overall perception and consumer engagement.  

While the above examples are primarily women's high-end clothing brands, this same technique can be applied to other brands and brand types to increase success, consumer reach, and consumer engagement.  Consumers applaud brands for doing something different than what every brand is doing.  Being unique is important, and creating a strong brand and brand image is perhaps even more important.  Utilizing these posting techniques allow a brand to go from one selling goods and services to being a true lifestyle that consumers are extremely connected to, and isn't that the goal anyway?

xo 

Snapchat Music Filters??????

Throwback to the rainbow stream coming out of your mouth and the big shiny eyes original snapchat filter that sometimes still makes a comeback.  Since this Snapchat breakthrough, filters have been a staple in the app.  As Snapchat strives to be and remain profitable, more creative advertising can be seen.

Snapchat filters can truly be anything.  They can transform your face, you can create your own for events, and recently they have been used for music releases.  Ed Sheeran hadn't released any music in quite some time, so creative marketing and PR was crucial for getting the public excited about his music again.  For the release of his song, Shape of You, a Snapchat filter popped up right before the release.  The filter was simply sunglasses with a blue rim that played a teaser of ten seconds of the song before it was released.  This definitely created hype and was spread through out the Snapchat universe quickly.

After this crazy, creative marketing move, The Chainsmokers had to get on board.  The Chainsmokers is the most recent artist or band to release a song teaser via snapchat.  This filter was very similar to Ed's, except it had words on it that explained what it was.  This filter also assisted with the spread of the song and increased hype for the release.

Does this mean that Snapchat filters is the new way to release music? Snapchat filters have previously been used for advertising, but never had sound with them.  This type of filter opens the door for other artists to do the same, and could potentially be utilized for other industries as well.  Utilizing sound for fun things like music releases is innovative and cool, it is important that industries wanting to do the same don't think this is a means for old school advertising.  This would not go over well with consumers and would definitely make this concept lose its cool factor.

xo