weekday: becoming your own style icon
week nine
In the current digital age where “influencer culture” has taken over, the global market of influencer marketing reached its record value of 13.8 billion USD in 2021. With such figures, it is not uncommon to find individuals of younger generations aspiring to be Instagram influencers, YouTubers or TikTok famous, as money and success is seemingly promised in these career paths.
case study: weekday
Owned by H&M Group, Weekday is a Swedish streetwear a fashion brand ‘influenced by youth culture and street style’ and has over 55 stores in 16 different countries. Weekday’s instagram page often features shoppers’ modelling their clothing pieces, stating in their bio ‘Tag us @weekdayofficial and #inweekday for a chance to be featured!’
Due to the centrality of social media and the role it plays in our everyday lives, encouraging user-generated content (UGC) has become a very successful marketing technique used by brands. The incentive is that anyone has the chance to be featured as a “Instagram model”, on a page that has a large following of over 638,000 users. You can appear alongside the digital creators, sponsored models and collaborators, as one of them.
Entrepreneur, academic and author Dave Evans emphasises the sheer power of social networks and user-generated content and its ability to reach and connect with “ordinary people”. The idea is to position the customer at the centre of the brand, which becomes advantageous for several reasons.
- Weekday are able to rely on their customers for Instagram/social media content, a cost-effective way to promote their brand and attract more customers.
- Placing a focus on user-generated content helps to build trust between Weekday and their customers. People are more likely to buy products that are reviewed positively by other consumers.
- For the creators of user-generated content, they are able to participate in an online community – gain visibility through Weekday’s exposure (likes, comments, followers).
As previously mentioned, Weekday are just one of many brands implementing similar social media strategies that are focused on UGC. Brands like Glossier, La Croix, Parachute have all utilised successful UGC marketing techniques to influence customers. Rihanna’s lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty, took full advantage of the “influencer culture” power – partnering with hundreds of diverse ambassadors across the world, who help to promote the products. Launched in May 2018, Savage X Fenty now has over 4.6 million followers followers on Instagram.
It’s easy to recognise that technological developments and social media has allowed for what Professor Freedman calls the ‘new protagonists of power‘ in the media economy. At the same time, Freedman outlines ‘The Contradictions of Media Power‘. He suggests that although creative and engaged acts (such as UGC as a marketing tool) are helping to shape evolving media and political cultures, they represent ‘minority behaviour‘. He states that this is because social media will never fully remove the inherent influence of power and wealth from the political process. It can therefore be argued that the power given to consumers in the case of UGC, will almost always be a tool that the brand benefits from the most.
For participants of Weekday’s hashtag #inweekday, there is no guarantee that they will be gain exposure or visibility, let alone be selected as a feature, yet the incentive of the possibility motivates users to continue posting. Ultimately, Weekday benefit the most from generating free promotion and visual content of their clothing on social media, whilst building a stronger relationship between their customers, and attracting others to join Weekday’s online community.