20190920_wwd_cover_image.jpg
20190920_wwd_logo.jpg

DIGITAL ADVERTISING – AMPLIFIED

Stylophane is the digital advertising agency servicing the fashion and beauty industries, amplifying brands in a high-stakes battle for consumer attention.

 

20190920_wwd_article_mainimage.jpg

For nearly two decades, New York-based digital advertising agency Stylophane has been exclusively serving the fashion and beauty industries to help their brands reach digital success.

While it’s true, the worlds of fashion and beauty have changed, being shaped by the advent of digital technologies – advertising has changed right alongside it.

Digital Ads, Big Money

According to eMarketer, total U.S. ad spend for this year will hit $238.8 billion, with digital ad spend accounting for over half, or 54.2 percent of the market, at $109.5 billion.

Digital marketing is fast evolving, with dedicated agencies rising to manage e-commerce, customer relationship management, email marketing and more, on behalf of brands.

Although some brands may falter under new challenges, Stylophane has seized the digital revolution to foster new growth, having worked hand-in-hand with key decision makers at over 200 fashion companies since inception.

Stylophane’s chief executive offcer and founder, Alex Mendoza has seen it all take shape, and he’s placing all his bets on digital for fashion brands to survive.

“I would conclude that digital success for the brand may be the biggest deciding factor on the survival or decline of any fashion company today and for the next 10 years; fashion companies will have to compete at the highest level digitally to succeed,” said Mendoza.

Perhaps brand storytelling is inherent at Stylophane.

Storytelling, Expert Selling

Stylophane’s chief executive offcer, Alex Mendoza and wife Marlena Albin have a track record of building and marketing end-to-end fashion e-commerce businesses, having founded Karmaloop in the late 90s.

They started Karmaloop, an early pioneer in fashion e-commerce, selling underground rave clothing as an ode to San Francisco’s electronic rave music scene.

After selling their majority control of Karmaloop concluding their brief stint in Boston, they moved back to San Francisco to found Stylophane, a consultancy to provide technology advice and guidance to fashion companies aiming to sell their brands online.

Stylophane is now headquartered in New York City – at the center of fashion – with the Miami offce which opened this year.

Today, Stylophane’s expertise is highly sought-after, having consulted the businesses of Karl Lagerfeld, Revolve, Express, Loft, Bond No 9, Milk Make Up – now currently consulting with French Connection, Spiritual Gangster, For Love and Lemons, Marco Bicego, Hanes Brands, Randa Accessories and many others.

Today’s Digital Ad Landscape

With the impetus of the digital revolution, traditional ad agencies have witnessed a stark decline. Doing things as they were accustomed to is no longer acceptable in the fast-paced digital world proliferated by many voices – vying for consumer attention across social media platforms, through the rise of video content and special branded campaigns.

To have their brands seen and heard amongst the crowds, companies are outsourcing and building their own “digital marketing stack” of specialized technology partners and agencies, rather than the older full-service agency concept.

Why? Digital advertising is constantly growing and expanding, in likeness to the “big bang,” as Mendoza describes it.

Getting increasingly complex with the infux of new ad technologies, more specialized partners entering the space, new platforms to be familiarized with, new tools to use – it becomes choice overload for marketing professionals.

“There’s too many things, too many tools, too many options – most are not really that necessary, and it becomes diffcult for the average fashion marketing professional to know what’s really important and what to ignore,” said Mendoza.

In this high-stakes competitive, saturated environment, “companies always seek out better results,” as Mendoza reiterated, stressing the need for competence and good data.

But who really knows their stuff today?

Mendoza cites “there is a signifcant lack of skilled labor for the multitude of digital marketing disciplines required to compete in winning the fashion consumer,” resulting often in digital teams that really could use more high level guidance.

All of the account management team must have 5 to 10 years of fashion experience before coming to Stylophane, which brings deeper understanding of brand challenges and better solutions to reach the desired consumer.

“We cut the fat, reallocate the funds, and really push social advertising where new customer acquisition is best achieved.”

That’s what Mendoza advises of brands.

Stylophane’s focus is digital advertising, which allows companies to scale their digital business. It operates “where the rubber meets the road,” according to Mendoza.

Take a brand with all the creative and digital elements in place: a great website platform, product photography, social platforms, digital content, infuencers, social pages — without advertising muscle to amplify the brand’s digital investment it still may not be enough to drive meaningful consumer engagement and increase revenue.

That’s why brands tap Stylophane to “amplify all this valuable content” they have worked hard on and invested in, so it reaches a much larger audience.

Social Media As a Battlegrounds

Ten years ago, Stylophane hired several interns to test and play within a burgeoning social platform (Facebook), ranking hundreds of fashion brands by the number of “fans.” From there, Stylophane’s data evolved and its monthly rankings from their social media analytics platform was born.

Some 9,000 fashion and beauty brands are tracked each month by Stylophane’s social media analytics platform, being cited by numerous media outlets, investment banks and its clients.

“We can identify, not only competitive social engagement stats, but we can also identify which posts specifcally are the cause of any spikes in engagement for our clients’ competitors,” informed Mendoza.

But getting social media advertising campaigns to yield successfully, is just one piece of what Stylophane offers to its clients.

Mendoza likens Stylophane to “hedge fund managers” for digital advertising,” which requires deep industry specifc experience and constant vigilance on market trends and changes in order to yield strong fnancial results from ad platforms, as well as a dozen-page strategic plan for each brand’s social campaigns.

Amplifying their unique voices amongst the herd is why brands hire Stylophane – and as Mendoza sees it: digital success will defne the winners and losers of tomorrow.

 
20190920_wwd_article_box.jpg
 
 

Get started or ask a question

Let’s customize a digital advertising program based on your brand's goals.

 

Exclusively serving the fashion and beauty industries since 2002.

Stylophane provides thoughtful recommendations based off of metrics and real-time trends, generating successful results and showing how much paid social can really move the needle...”
ALTERNATIVE APPAREL - Haley Athens, Social Media & PR Manager