How Do You Advertise In The Age Of Social Media Stars? Get Them Involved

While the style set readies for fashion month, the four-week stretch of continuous runway shows in New York and Europe, some of fashion’s most influential voices are challenging the way we think about communication. No, we're not just talking about the brands that have gone direct-to-consumer (Public School, Baja East), see-now-buy-now (Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Mansur Gavriel), combined menswear and womenswear (Balenciaga, Gucci, Kenzo), opted for Instagram shows instead of IRL ones (Rebecca Minkoff, Lela Rose), or abandoned the official ready-to-wear schedule altogether to show at their own pace (Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Alexander Wang). I’m talking about advertising, which for decades has functioned as the most ubiquitous point of entry to the fashion world for the masses.

Today, JW Anderson launched a new campaign on social media that, rather than featuring its spring 2018 collection, is instead a call for photography submissions. Aimed at professional and amateur photographers between the ages of 18 and 30, the graphic ad designed by M/M Paris asks, “Do you have image fatigue?... Do you want to be part of a new, new wave?” The winners will have the opportunity to collaborate with one of fashion’s most inquisitive and revolutionary minds - and have their work displayed in rogue postings and in magazines. Jonathan Anderson has a strong track record for finding young talent and jump-starting their careers - some of his earliest work was lensed by Jamie Hawkesworth. This is a great opportunity for young talents out there, even if it’s unclear if they’ll be paid. I’d bet the submissions are already rolling in.

The decision to crowdsource Anderson’s brand image represents a marked shift in the way fashion houses have thought about advertising in the past five years. Since the halcyon days of Tom Ford–era Gucci ads starring a glossed-up Georgina Grenville, fashion has been on a fast track away from associating the urge to shop with the idea of aspirational luxury. You can track the progression from Marc Jacobs’s lo-fi Juergen Teller-lensed campaigns to Alessandro Michele’s Glen Luchford–shot street photos for his first Gucci collection to this season’s call-to-action JW Anderson campaign, each taking another step towards breaking down the artifice of high fashion as something distant or unrelated to the average person’s life.

But more than advocate for a more relatable vision of fashion, what Anderson’s decision to crowdsource his advertising really does is solve the problem of how to advertise to people who are already the stars of their own social media worlds. When you can create your own (or the illusion of your own) aspirational life across Instagram and Snapchat, you don’t need brands to show you how it’s done. And with the thousands of images we see on our smartphones every day, the many versions of “living your best life” grow stale quicker than ever before.

Instead of telling people how to live their lives, the smartest companies are asking people to participate in that company’s version of the world. Anderson is not the first to try it. Glossier, the ür-millennial beauty brand, set the course with campaigns starring “real girls” (or as close as you can get to that while sourcing talent on Instagram). Since the faces of Coco Baudelle and Paloma Elsesser have become synonymous with the label’s easy skincare and make-up products, it’s instituted an Avon lady-like approach to retail, allowing its muses to earn a commission on the products they recommend to their friends.

Yeezy, too, got its fans involved in its recent campaign, asking social media superstars to don a Kim Kardashian West wig and recreate her infamous paparazzi photos. Regardless of your take on the Wests’ sense of style, the imagery was impactful enough to spawn countless imitations, including ones from other celebrities. (Ahem, Diplo.)

Consider this form of participation the new aspiration, the idea of being a part of the club as the gateway to becoming a lifestyle brand. The only question is, if and when everyone else will get the memo.