Fashion’s Most Respected Brands Collab with Brandlive for Their Virtual Events

Brandlive was well-positioned for the pivot to a digital-first working world in March 2020.  As a long-time partner of sportswear giant Nike, we had created a virtual showroom for them well ahead of the pandemic. The showroom helped Nike to reach distributed retail and wholesale audiences with product education and seasonal go-to-market events. The Brandlive platform took the physical elements of a showroom (like printouts, presentations, and a three-ring binder) and turned it into an immersive, interactive, digital experience – complete with catalogs and virtual training sessions. And, since it was virtual, Nike’s audience could consume this content at any time, from any location. 

Today, multi-billion dollar businesses and key industry players like Adidas, Patagonia, VF Corp and Luxottica host a variety of virtual events and product hubs on Brandlive. Having powered over 65,000 digital events and webinars since 2020, we work with our partners to provide digital solutions to their specific business needs, whether that’s supporting their sales kick-off meetings, go-to-market events, product releases, building on-demand product hubs or other marketing initiatives. 

Our Chief Product Officer, Thomas Iwasaki, shares his thoughts on what drives success for the world’s biggest fashion brands, and how these brands leverage virtual experiences and product hubs to best connect with their audience.

Event opportunities for today’s largest fashion brands

Fashion executives expect digital to be the biggest opportunity in fashion moving forward, with around 90% of executives anticipating hybrid working to become the norm, according to McKinsey’s State of Fashion Report 2021. The biggest opportunity for brands to make a splash is in investing in exceptional content; stuff that’s much more impactful than anything you’d be able to show on your standard web conferencing platforms. 

At the outset of the pandemic, many of our partners wanted to put their go-to-market meetings online. Those events didn’t translate well on web conferencing software (it’s really hard to get a high impact story across on that type of meeting software) especially if your audience can’t make a set meeting time. Plus, very few people will re-watch a recorded Zoom call.

By putting in the investment in time to develop eye-catching graphics and creating compelling, visual brand stories, your products will really shine for you and capture the attention of their audience. A well produced series of five to ten minute videos tends to see a lot more engagement than a recorded meeting.

What’s needed in modern digital showrooms

Digital showrooms are for brands that are leaning into and embracing an always-on virtual mindset, where they can host key partners and salespeople or distributors in that go-to-market world. This not only increases reach and engagement, but also reduces the cost and environmental impact of traveling to a physical showroom space. For example, Patagonia moved a press event onto Brandlive, sharing with us an original invite list of about 100 individuals. That invite list ended up increasing to 1,200 individuals, and once they uploaded their 20 videos onto the platform, we saw about 75 percent viewership of the content from that invite list.

Unlike typical meeting and events platforms, the Brandlive platform is designed to connect with the audience in a highly-visual way. We use Netflix-style content drops and chat rooms, with product catalogs and Q&A functions to give brands the opportunity to produce more high quality content for internal and partner audiences.

The evolution of media consumption

Almost everything we watch today is pre-recorded and on-demand, so brands have to think about how to create fun, dynamic experiences for their audiences. For example, a brand like Nike may drop 20 videos at the beginning of the season, punctuated with a live kick-off event to bring people together but designed for asynchronous consumption – so it feels more like tuning in to your favorite streaming show. 

Companies like Nike are pulling a page from the most popular consumer content. They’re beginning to figure out what makes content entertaining, and it all starts with meaningful storytelling and video content. 

In a virtual event context, elements like themed segments, thoughtful transitions, and energetic music all help to elevate the content – that, and investing in the right tools and teams to make it happen. Once you get your audience hooked with incredible content, our engagement tools (like polls, chats, and Q&A) are just a bonus to ensure people stay alert and engaged throughout any experience. 

Content to engage event audiences

These days, the content that resonates with audiences is the content that tells a story, and that reflects back to the central brand message. And there are ways to really make your story stand out, like using short segments so things stay fresh and intentionally using color and imagery to set the tone. To really find content that excites your audience, you have to get to know them. With Brandlive, you can get insights to see what your audience has watched, plus when they watched and for how long, allowing you to fine-tune your future content accordingly.