The Fashion Pitch: Techniques to Make Your Fashion Brand Stand Out

Define your 10 second brand pitch.

Visual and Conceptual Communication

1. Refine

   Take some time to do some soul searching. This is going to be important to refine your area of expertise

   This will help you define the brand and the story that goes along with it.  

   What's the 'story' behind how this company started?  

   How would you define your brand/company?  

   What are the Brand values that you want to focus on?

2. Research

   Start researching your competition and any brands that you have a strong appreciation for. (Try to focus on the successful ones as they have already proven measures of success)

   What are their brand values?  

   What type of verbiage do they use in their tagline, about us page, marketing materials and social media outlets?

   Start organizing the verbiage and content that synergizes with you and evaluate what you want your brand to visusually look and sound like.

   It's important to start focusing on the differentiating factors.  How is your brand/company different from your competition?

   What do you want your current or potential consumers to feel when they think of your brand?  Happy?  Inspired?  Sexy?

3. Create a mind-map

   When creating your Mind-map, draw a circle in the middle of a piece of paper and the name that you’re focusing on branding. That represents the Brand.

   Now start thinking of all the terms you would use to describe it and the values it represents and branch each keyword out from the circle. That is all supporting content.

4. Share your mindmap

   Share your progress on your mindmap in your project section to get feedback from other students

Defining Your Brand

1. What does your Brand look like?

   To be a brand that is memorable, likable and trusted.. so much that your customer falls in love with you and you become the only choice?

   Start asking yourself some of these questions:

   1. Who are you?

   2. What does your brand/company do?

   3. What do you sound like?

   4. How do you help your potential customers?

2. Who is your Target market? Who needs you product/service?

   The better you understand your customer, the faster your business will grow. But new ventures often struggle to define their target market and set their sights too broadly.
   
   1. What problem does your product/service solve?
   
   By understanding a problem and its remedy, you are already  on your way to finding the customer segment that wants what you are offering. People don’t buy a service or a product, they buy a solution.
   
   2. What do you know about your target customers?
   
   Now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, there’s nothing like demographic data to narrow down your target market.
   
   Demographic data includes things like age, gender, income and occupation. By determining as much of this information as you can, you can understand the type of customer who would buy your product.
   
   Why should you know specifics about your target market? With a well-defined description of your ideal customer, you know exactly who to sell to, what they need and how to convince them they should buy from you.
   
   The following is a list of some things to consider when defining your target market’s demographic profile. Use this list to help yourself envision and understand your market. If you already have a customer base, try identifying some of the characteristics they share, including:
   
   Age
   Location
   Gender
   Income
   Education
   Family status
   Occupation
   Ethnic background
   Personality
   Attitude
   Values
   Interests
   Lifestyles
   Behaviors
   
   By having a compilation of such data, you’ve pretty much found the person who needs your product, wants your product and will buy your product. It keeps you focused.
   
   3. Is there competition in your target market?
   
   First, you want competition. A good dose of competition is healthy for you and indicates a viable market, so long as there’s not too much competition. If the market you’re considering is saturated, try to find an adjacent segment that has plenty of room for new players.
   
   Research who your competition is. Find out who competitors are advertising to and how. The more successful competitors in a market are worth studying because they’re attracting the specific market that will put money down for your product. But also consider if there is a niche they’re overlooking.

3. Share your Target Market..

   Share your progress in your project section to get feedback from other students

10-Second Elevator Pitch

1. Deliverables: Final 10-second elevator pitch

   Go through the following questions and try to answer as many of them as possible when putting together the final deliverable:

   1. Who needs your product/service?
   2. What exactly are you offering and how do you do it?
   3. Where? Online? In person?
   4. When? Real-time? Over a period of time?

2. Share your 10-second pitch

   Share your progress on your 10-second pitch in your project section to get feedback from other students

Additional Resources

• Mind Mapping Tools:

  http://www.mindmeister.com/

  http://www.gliffy.com/