Content creator marketing is the trend that shows little sign of abating, as brands that promote cars all the way to those that craft environmentally friendly clothing are forced to engage with this new social media frontier. As the sector has grown, so too have its niches, with creators of all varieties battling to establish themselves as the go-to-name in their respective space.
The eco-friendly fashion arena is no different, with sustainable fashion brands looking to align themselves with equally eco-minded content creators, whose followings are highly engaged and fiercely loyal. With one of our founders, @loretogala, being something of a creator herself, TWOTHIRDS has always been aware of the power that such figures have when it comes to how a sustainable fashion brand is perceived. We have watched on intently, as eco content creators have risen to become the taste makers of the environmentally friendly clothing industry. This is how we work with a select few of them, to ensure that we remain true to our mission: to protect our ocean.
User Generated Content Rules The Waves
Once upon a time marketing and advertising teams were all about trying to churn out the most professional and stylish campaigns, which could outshine the competition. Since the rise of social media, this has all changed, as consumers are unwilling to take a sustainable fashion brand’s word at face value, preferring to trust instead in online personalities who they’ve grown to know and trust. Thus the term “influencer”, which denotes someone who has provided hours, days, or years of highly personalised content, which in turn has enabled them to build bonds with consumers that standard commercial marketing departments can only dream of. It’s these personal connections that every ethical fashion brand is now looking to tap into.
Content Creators Can Make & Break A Brand
Choosing which content creators to work with is becoming something of an artform. Collaborate with the wrong ones and suddenly you might find that your eco-friendly dresses or sustainable skirts have become less desirable than they were in the first place. However, find the right content creator and it’s amazing to see the results their reach can bring to the visibility of environmentally friendly clothing or any other sustainable product.
The best eco content creators to work with are those who have a consistent and genuine persona. There is nothing worse than a creator coming across as fake or unengaged with the eco-friendly fashion and ocean lifestyle we’re trying to convey. Research is key. Our Influencer Manager, Nicole, scours social media to find those creators who not only align with our brand values, but who also have a similar aesthetic to that of TWOTHIRDS, and whose followers are the subsection of society we want to add to our community.
For these reasons, we only work with eco-conscious creators who have a deep love for the great outdoors, a flair for photography or videography, and who fit with the community persona we always try to gear all our eco fashion communications towards.
Despite a brand’s best efforts, things can still go wrong. Just days after being clad in environmentally friendly clothing, the same content creator might be seen wearing a fast fashion outfit or, even worse, could go viral with a comment made in bad taste; that goes against everything a sustainable fashion brand like TWOTHIRDS stands for.
Professionalisation Of The Eco Content Creator Scene
Once upon a time, eco content creators were a small band of social media savvy people who thought that by harnessing platforms like Instagram they might be able to forge a life for themselves that involved wearing free environmentally friendly clothing whilst travelling the world backpacking or in a converted campervan.
The dreamers they were, it’s unclear they knew quite the impact they would begin to have on the world of sustainable fashion and business at large. Today, those same dreamers command huge sums in return for collaborating with a brand or even just mentioning it in passing. As the practice has become a fully fledged sector, it has likewise grown more professional.
Many eco content creators are now represented by agencies that take care of contracts, payments and legal matters, leaving creators to go about creating content and promoting sustainable shorts and eco-friendly swimwear to their followers. As things grow more corporatised, there arises the danger of eco fashion content creators as being seen to have sold out. However, we believe that as long as they stay true to who they are and continue to advocate for an end to fast fashion, and the adoption of environmentally friendly clothing, there’s nothing wrong with the good guys doing well for themselves.
The Eco/Sales Contradiction
That said, there are some contradictory forces at play in the realm of eco influencing, one being that any creator’s main source of income derives from them promoting the environmentally friendly clothes of the eco fashion brands they partner with. This makes them reliant on those same companies selling as many products as possible – an increase in production which isn’t always what might be best for the planet or our ocean, even if those sustainable trousers or eco-friendly activewear pieces have a lower environmental impact than fast fashion alternatives.
The counter argument is that by advocating for sustainable fashion brands, such as TWOTHIRDS, that use systems like PRE-ORDER to eliminate overproduction and slow fashion waste, content creators are helping change consumer habits and behaviours for the better. What is for certain is that it’s almost impossible for a producer of environmentally friendly clothing not to make use of content creators as part of their marketing strategy.
What’s Next For Eco Content Creators?
They’ve taken over social media, they lead many of the conversations around circular fashion and sustainable clothing, so what’s next for creators and more specifically eco content creators? Firstly, micro is increasingly becoming more desirable than macro. This is because micro influencers (10,000-50,000 followers) tend to have higher engagement rates than the Kim Kardashians of this world, despite having much smaller followings. Connected to this trend, sustainable fashion brands themselves are already looking at trying to grow their very own crop of eco content creators. Such in-house influencers would be far easier to keep on-message and would also probably be more economical to work with, however it remains to be seen if they would be seen as legitimate by savvy social media users and slow fashion fans.