Event marketing is one of the best solutions to increase brand awareness and brand equity for Fashion and Luxury companies.
While prestige, exclusivity and uniqueness are historical trademarks of the Luxury and Fashion worlds, the definition of what is luxury is constantly evolving and is always more centred on easily reachable and desired aspects: quality and comfort.
The industry of Fashion has always gone hand in hand with the concept of Luxury. In fact, there’s an unwritten bond between these two, always more polarized worlds, which in the global public imagination are perceived as an actual showcase for the excellences of savoir faire and tradition. Even in 2016, Italy has maintained its leading position as a reference point for the fashion and luxury markets.
In a sector such as that of Fashion, in which evocative and symbolic aspects prevail, fashion companies must try to strengthen their brand identity, in order to offer consumers a guarantee of the value that goes beyond the seasonal temporality of the product.
The role of the brand, in fact, is that of communicating the values of the company by exploiting emotional elements to differentiate the offer and create a loyal client base. Hence, the brand’s strength is a sine qua non condition for the increase of consumer loyalty and in order to influence on the client’s decision-making process.
Statistics show that event marketing is one of the most efficient strategies to increase consumer loyalty, by generating new leads and increasing the existing network. In fact, events have acquired an always more central connotation in the lives of the companies and of their clients. Therefore, in a time consisting of financial unrest and excessive choice for the consumer, an event may represent the ideal, innovative and engaging medium through which companies can build brand awareness and orient the decision-making process of every client.
For this reason, we must move on from conceiving an event as simply a communication tool, but rather see it as an experience that is closely correlated to what the brand wishes to transmit. Hence, an event that must not be limited to engaging its participants by building brand identity, but should also increase it.
Therefore, an event must be interpreted as an investment aimed at enhancing the perception that the consumers have of the brand’s image, and no longer as a way to just self-congratulate the brand itself. Carrying out an original and engaging corporate event will inevitably strengthen the company’s brand equity. By participating at the event, in fact, consumers will improve their perception of the brand (brand attitude) and, at the same time, will also live an experience that will evoke an emotional and rational response towards the brand (brand experience).
In conclusion, the more an event is capable of generating intense and compelling experiences for its participants, the greater the increase of brand equity and, in turn of brand identity.