KINGSTON, Jamaica – Branding and public relations experts attending the business forum, part of the recently ended Caribbean Fashion Week, have highlighted the need for local players in the fashion industry to invest more in public relations and improving their company and product branding to advance their trade and globalise their local products.
Addressing designers, regional industry professionals and members of the media at the Jamaica National Building Society (JNBS)- sponsored forum at Spanish Court Hotel, Rozan Ahmed, PR Specialist and founder of the international glamour outfit Bougi, emphasised the need for strengthening the relationship between culture and commerce through the promotion of indigenous creations.
“Before going global, we have to think local… I really believe in grasping and appreciating what is around us locally and shaping identity and owning it,” she posited, pointing out that promoting local culture is necessary if local producers hope to influence the global marketplace.
“My voice in this creative sphere is to lend a voice to what is locally influenced because that will directly lead to our influence; directly lead to buying; and directly lead to empowerment,” she underscored.
Jessica Huie, a London-based international PR Specialist and owner of Jessica Huie Public Relations, who has worked with celebrities, such as Samuel L. Jackson, went further arguing that local designers need to spend time learning and investing in their own public relations.
Providing several tips to the audience, she advised that it was necessary for manufacturers to dedicate at least one day per week to public relations.
“Many people think of PR as something for big companies with massive budgets, but it’s not. It’s something every business and service provider must start to think about right from the off…”
“Immediately you start to get press coverage you start to become attractive to buyers,” she explained, although cautiously indicating that public relations does not necessarily result in immediate calls and sales, but rather was about building awareness of one’s brand over time.
Public relations, as opposed to advertising, Ms. Huie emphasised, gives investors insight into the values a person or a company embraces. “It takes people beyond the product and indicates what you’re really all about.”
She said it was important for people in the local fashion industry to learn the nature of public relations, including how to prepare effective news releases and how to engage journalists in an effort to reach their target audiences.
“Your press release should be no more than a page and a half in length. It’s not enough to say that you are launching unless there is something exceptional about that,” she noted as an example.
For her part, international branding expert, Kubi Springer, highlighted that to effectively market their products, local players must first understand the emotional connection they are seeking with their target audience.
“If you don’t know the emotion you want the person to get, you simply cannot sell to them because there are millions of other people around the world who are also amazing fashion designers who are also selling a dress,” she advised.
Explaining the concept of becoming “glocal”, she emphasized the need for fashion entrepreneurs to pursue unsaturated markets and to understand how to create products suitable to the tastes of those markets.
“Say you want to penetrate the Asian market, you need to understand how they perceive even the cut of a garment; how do they use fashion in those markets and not assume that they use it the same way we do,” she noted.
Peta-Gay Miller, Financial Advisor at JN Fund Managers, the wealth subsidiary of JNBS, stressed the need for entrepreneurs to always have a plan and a sound financial management system. She noted that while as artists fashion entrepreneurs are creative, they must also understand the importance of sound financial management.
“Financial management skills are something completely different… something which may seem to be boring or even hostile…but, those skills can mean the difference between success and being marginalised,” she stated.
