In The King and the Gods, author Dama Thomas wrote that as early as the 1990s, the fashion industry noticed that the clothing worn by celebrities at awards ceremonies could create a strong communication momentum for brands. Today, 30 years later, celebrity styling is still a hot topic, and the brand's thinking on red carpet clothing shows no signs of diminishing. Luxury jewelry, seiko couture, and even private customization, brands are doing their best to grab headlines and audience eyeballs by "wrapping" red carpet stars.
At the 94th Academy Awards, more than half of the five actors nominated for Best Actress appeared in the brand's custom gowns: Kristen Stewart wore a Chanel custom suit with an open white shirt and mini shorts; Nicole Kidman chose to wear Armani Privé's custom gray-blue trailing dress for "Quiet Elegance"; and the queen trophy that night Jessica Chastain is styled by Gucci, a gradient sequined dress, superimposed with a purple scratched tail and V-neck design, showing a gorgeous and grand red carpet style.
Kristen Stewart wore a Chanel custom suit dress on the red carpet at the 94th Academy Awards
It is worth noting that brands that do not involve dresses in their own category matrix, in order to avoid missing the traffic brought by the awards season, often also implant red carpet through the form of customized dresses. Taking Louis Vuitton as an example, the brand has not yet opened up a couture line, and the ready-to-wear collection is basically based on more everyday items such as short jackets and leather jackets, but at this year's Oscars, the brand still chooses to cooperate deeply with stars such as Alana Haim to tailor red carpet dresses.
Alana Haim wore a Louis Vuitton custom gown on the red carpet at the 94th Academy Awards
Behind the high-profile exposure of brands on celebrities, there is often a large amount of advertising costs hidden. Jessica Paster, a stylist who serves celebrity supermodels such as Cate Blanchett, Emily Blunt and Miranda Kerr, has revealed to the fashion outlet The Cut that brands pay stylists at least $30,000 or more, and if you contact celebrities directly, the offer usually starts at $100,000. According to gossip, at the 2011 Oscars, American actress Anne Hathaway, who was the host, wore a number of Tiffany jewelry, and the brand paid up to $750,000 for it. In order to make Oscar queen Gwyneth Paltrow wear his own jewelry, Louis Vuitton also paid $500,000.
Anne Hathaway wore the Tiffany jewelry necklace to win Best Supporting Actress at the 2013 Academy Awards
Attitudes towards the money behind beautiful shapes vary. Supporters generally believe that celebrities collect money to show brand clothing on the red carpet is harmless, and it is even a cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing thing for brands, because brands pay relatively less to celebrities than advertising in TV magazines, but they can achieve better marketing results. Jessica Paster said bluntly in an interview, "If this dress looks good, we would have chosen it in the first place, so why can't we collect some money?" In the view of the opponents, the celebrity advertises for the brand without reasonable information disclosure, which is actually a deceptive act and misleads the consumer's purchase decision.
For a long time, the inside story of red carpet sponsorship was basically only known to industry insiders. But on the eve of the 2017 Oscars, the deal was brought to the public eye by Chanel's then-helmsman Karl Lagerfeld and American actress Meryl Streep. According to Karl Lagerfeld, the Meryl Streep team had asked Chanel for a custom red carpet dress, which Karl Lagerfeld gladly accepted, but unexpectedly received a notice to terminate production after the sketch was completed, because the Meryl Streep team claimed to have found a brand willing to pay for cooperation. The move enraged Karl Lagerfeld and said publicly, "(Meryl Streep) is known as a talented actor, but it is also very cheap." ”
Meryl Streep wore a Lanvin gold dress at the 2012 Academy Awards
After the public opinion field was detonated, Meryl Streep stylist Micaela Erlanger came forward to explain that according to the industry standard procedure, on the eve of each award ceremony, multiple brands will provide dress sketches for celebrities to choose, and Chanel also knows that Meryl Streep is approaching other brands at the same time. In the end, the decision was made to replace the brand, simply because of a temporary change in the direction of the styling, Micaela Erlanger stressed that "the process of communicating with the brand does not involve money transactions at all". Micaela Erlangerde's claim was later officially endorsed by Chanel, and the dispute ended after it was confirmed as a misunderstanding. But the brand's paid implantation behavior and the resulting discussion have not been pressed to stop.
In recent years, the awards ceremony represented by the Oscars has faced a situation of ratings diving, but the brand still spares no effort to invest in it.
Although the awards ceremony is cold, the stars still have an appeal to the public. Alison Stiefel, general manager of the digital shopping platform, pointed out that the question of "what celebrities wear" has always aroused the curiosity of many people, but now people tend to search for relevant information, "compared to spending hours watching the show, people want to get the content they want quickly."
The public's active search for star shapes actually has a precedent, in the millennium Grammy Awards, the popular female singer Jennifer Lopez wore a translucent green tulle Versace long dress with a front placket slit, and then instantly ignited people's enthusiasm for search. Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in an interview, "[At the time] everyone was searching for this dress, and it was the hottest search topic we've ever seen."
According to Versace Creative Director Donatella Versace, that appearance at the Grammys was an unexpected success. The day after Jennifer Lopez put on Versace, almost the world was talking about the dress. Donatella said, "The only thing that has caused the same effect before this is probably the Gianni Versace pin skirt that Elizabeth Hurley wore back then." ”
Elizabeth Hurley
In addition to the public, there are many media that rely on celebrity information to nourish them. This means that even if the traffic that can be gathered at the award ceremony is sharply reduced, if it can be bundled with high-profile stars, brand clothing can still rely on extensive media coverage and get widespread exposure. Therefore, for the brand, whether it can successfully bet on the winner is not crucial, as long as the cooperation object is hot enough, it can also become a key medium for the brand to radiate the mass market.
Red carpet marketing may seem to have only an instantaneous impact, but it actually has a very significant long tail effect. Classic red carpet looks created for celebrities can often pass through the cycle and remain as communication materials for brands to use repeatedly. Like life in Looks, a popular video section of vogue in the United States this year, it invited fashion celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Bella Hadid and Gwyneth Paltrow to review their classic looks. In the styling archives of these celebrities, the red carpet dress occupies a large proportion, and each subject will not only introduce the brand of knife styling, but also tell the story behind the anecdotes when reviewing, which is undoubtedly an in-depth, vivid and three-dimensional brand education for the viewer.
While there has been much skepticism about whether red carpet marketing can boost sales, there is no shortage of digital evidence. Fashion search engine ShopStyle data shows that during the awards season, people's search for dresses will increase significantly. In addition, Racked.com also found through quantitative analysis that there is a correlation between the number of exposures a brand has on the red carpet and the sales of the corresponding year. In the case of Valentino, the brand worked with 11 stars to create a red carpet look in 2013, and sales nearly doubled that year. But by 2015, there were only 2 stars wearing Valentino on the red carpet throughout the year, and although the brand's revenue still grew, the increase was significantly reduced, only 36%.
However, it should be noted that in the matter of red carpet marketing, the most beautiful, youngest or most fashionable stars may not be able to match the most ideal effect, and the object with which the target customer group can have an emotional connection is the key to opening the valve of making money. Fashion website StyleSpot.com links celebrities' red carpet photos with online retail stores such as Amazon, and through analyzing background data, it is found that it is not the fashion idols recognized in the industry that can really drive sales.
For example, british actress Carey Mulligan, who is well-known as a dressing expert and fashion magazine darling, was sponsored by many brands when she was nominated for the Oscar for "Growth Education" in 2010, but Lily Hollander, director of the editorial department of StyleSpot.com, pointed out that from the website data, Carey Mulligan is not among the stars with goods. In contrast, although American actress Sandra Bullock is rarely mentioned in the fashion circle, her image of the lead girl can make the majority of women feel a sense of identity, thus achieving unexpected conversion numbers.
At StyleSpot.com, Sandra Bullock's photo of her vivienne Westwood dress on the People's Choice Awards red carpet attracted much attention, and she herself became the star who most encouraged viewers to click on the photo to jump to the sales business. Similarly, Meryl Streep is seen as a candidate with the potential to carry goods, because its dignified and mature style can attract women over the age of 40, and according to statistics, these women spend more on clothing than other age groups.
Sandra Bullock
Hollywood Branded Inc, a California-based entertainment marketing agency, conducted a survey that found that if a product is worn or used by their favorite celebrity, consumers' willingness to buy it will increase by 43%. However, the agency's CEO Stacy Jones also stressed that among the respondents, there are actually relatively few who can actually pay for big-name dresses, and some of the dresses are specially customized by the brand and are not sold to the public. It can be seen that in the brand's red carpet marketing, planting grass and high-priced clothing jewelry is not the first priority.
Brands are actually focusing on richer and more multiple returns. Tiffany Reid, vice president of fashion at the media company Bustle Digital Group, said the trend was initially showcased on the Fashion Week flyover, but it was rarely imitated by a wide range of people. If you want to really let these trends set off a boom in the mass market, you still need to use high-potential stars to lead. This means that even if the clothes worn by celebrities on the red carpet do not become the best-selling same model, the fashion elements contained in the styling, such as color matching, may unexpectedly become popular, thus driving the sales of other products with the same elements of the brand.
Timothée Chalamet wore Louis Vuitton's Spring /Summer 2022 collection on the red carpet at the 94th Academy Awards
In addition, the luxury industry has a classic product structure: haute couture is sold to the upper class, ready-to-wear shoes are aimed at the middle class, and entry-level products such as perfumes are supplied to the lower middle class to nourish their dreams of pursuing big names. Although customized dresses cannot stimulate the purchase desire of generalized people, it can convey brand spirit and cultural capital to the public, thereby deepening the recognition and favorability of the brand, and attracting consumers to choose other products with lower prices.
Compared with other forms of marketing, red carpet marketing may not be able to drive sales growth in the short term, but the combination of "star + top craft products" is an effective way to maintain the brand's sense of yearning. Some insiders pointed out that although the brand will comprehensively use representatives in many fields as a voice point when promoting, from the perspective of shaping the brand's high-end positioning and sense of distance, the endorsement efficiency of stars is still difficult for bloggers and anchors to look back on.
Since the epidemic, the fashion industry has been iteratively frequent, and the red carpet marketing of brands has also changed accordingly. On the one hand, brands no longer focus only on key awards ceremonies, but also on relatively small events at film premieres or film festivals, such as the previous release of "Dune", Zendaya has worked with many brands to create a unique shape for each premiere, which has attracted widespread attention on social media.
Zendaya debuts at the Valentino Fall/Winter 2022 fashion show
On the other hand, if the red carpet activity is cancelled due to epidemic prevention requirements or the star cannot walk the red carpet, the brand will work with the star team to automatically output the image material. There was no red carpet at last year's Golden Globes, and Anya Taylor-Joy wore Dior's custom green dress to shoot videos in the hotel and posted them through his personal Instagram account, which also stood out, and the group of images received more than 2 million likes on Instagram.
In recent years, the street trend that has invaded the haute couture house has more or less lost the dream core of fashion, and the high premium of luxury goods just needs sufficient added value to support. For brands, the red carpet is one of the few scenes that can raise the brand image and enhance the emotional value, so under the trend of frequent price increases for luxury goods, the brand's investment in red carpet marketing will only increase. WWD
Written by Drag
Edit Neon
Image source network