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On Wednesday, Balmain presented its Spring/Summer 2022 collection at Paris Fashion Week, marking its first in-person fashion show since the pandemic’s start as well as creative director Olivier Rousteing’s 10th anniversary at the brand.
But this season, a return to the runway wasn’t enough. The fashion show — which featured supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Carla Bruni in an extensive collection of new designs as well as some of the brand’s mid-2010s hits — doubled as the second iteration of Balmain’s branded music festival, an event it first hosted in June 2019. This time, it featured performances from artists like Doja Cat, while a voiceover from Beyoncé broadcast over the crowd congratulated Rousteing for his work championing diversity and change in the fashion industry. Livestreamed on the Balmain website, the spectacle was available for all to enjoy.
It’s one part of Balmain’s approach to “democratising” its brand, namely through big-ticket entertainment ventures. Balmain’s scripted television series, “Fracture,” rounds out this strategy. Produced with British broadcast network Channel Four and available to stream there, “Fracture” tells the story of a struggling musician, played by actress and musician Jessie Jo Stark (who also attended the festival), who confronts a troubled familial past while pursuing grand plans for her future, set in a seedy Los Angeles motel. Tommy Dorfman and Charles Melton, alumni of the shows “13 Reasons Why” and “Riverdale,” respectively, also make appearances. Rousteing helped cast and plot the series in addition to costuming.
Both the festival and the series are part of a new, entertainment-focused marketing strategy that the brand planned and executed over the course of the pandemic, becoming the latest fashion brand to test the power of video content as a marketing tool. The hope is that the five-part series in particular can broaden consumer perception of Balmain to help it stand out among its peers and recapture the more widespread cultural relevance it enjoyed in the mid-2010s.
“Everything has been done in terms of traditional campaigns,” said Balmain chief marketing officer Txampi Diz. “What’s the next step? We believe that this is one option.”
Fashion Content with ‘Credibility’
Fashion brands have ramped up their attempts to capitalise on the “Netflix revolution.” Gucci released film shorts with acclaimed director Gus van Sant on YouTube and its own channels in 2020, while in 2018, Kenzo tapped Milla Jovovich to star in a superhero-themed short film. Rihanna has teamed up with Amazon to stream her Savage X Fenty show three times since 2019.
Results have been mixed. Gucci’s project with Gus van Sant racked up a few million views on YouTube, but didn’t go necessarily go viral. Other brand ventures, like the Savage X Fenty shows, drove online buzz and in turn, sales of its products.
Balmain’s strategy is different from all of those approaches, said Diz, who believes that prioritising the story — not the clothes — plus the partnership with Channel Four lends credibility to the brand’s endeavour. (That’s not to say the clothes play no role: every character in the show is outfitted in full Balmain looks from the brand’s Pre-Fall and Fall/Winter 2021 collections, most of which are available for purchase.) It’s also a pointed attempt to reach new customers (specifically those between ages 20 and 35) that “don’t have Balmain top of mind but can, through this, surprise them and connect,” he said.
According to the brand, Channel Four has received 4.6 million views on the series’ episodes and supporting content, with the largest audience in the UK, followed by Brazil, Russia and Italy. An additional two million views (with one million unique users) were logged in the US and France, and episodes racked up four million on China’s Tencent platform.
The numbers may seem impressive but considering the investment, may lose some of their lustre when compared to some of Balmain’s other viral moments. Take Zendaya’s appearance on the 2021 Venice Film Festival red carpet wearing a custom Balmain couture leather dress, which went viral online and was amplified on Instagram to Zendaya’s 110 million followers. The effort required for one red carpet appearance, however extravagant, pales in comparison to that necessary to produce a television series, casting doubt on the strategy.
Still, a scripted television series — plus each of the marketing moments that derives from it, including campaign images shot on set, appearances from the cast at events through the rest of the year — can do more to build long-term brand awareness and loyalty than does a single red carpet moment.
“People don’t like being sold to, but they love to buy, so, using a creative outlet to organically integrate your message is going to more likely resonate with consumers,” said Courtney Worthman, SVP of corporate development at branded entertainment partnerships firm Burns Entertainment.
More Than Just a TV Show
The stakes are high for Balmain, which has invested heavily in this strategy to build that long-term loyalty.
Owned by Qatari investment fund Mayhoola, Balmain occupies a lesser share of the market than LVMH- and Kering-owned luxury players like Louis Vuitton, Dior or Gucci. Mayhoola does not publish sales figures, but Mario Ortelli, managing partner of Ortelli & Co., said that Balmain’s relatively small size and digital infrastructure, plus its exposure to wholesale and focus on ready-to-wear, may have caused the brand to suffer more than the European mega brands during the pandemic. In terms of cultural clout, Balmain ranked 18 of 20 on the Lyst Index hottest brands in the second quarter of 2021.
But it wasn’t so long ago that Balmain mania — the period roughly around 2015 — was at its height. Phrases like “Balmain Army” were commonplace, while proximity to the Kardashians and Beyoncé and a successful collaboration with H&M helped keep the brand top-of-mind for consumers.
It makes sense, then, that the brand would look to one of the driving forces — entertainment and celebrity — behind Balmain mania to regain relevance. Between the series and the music festival, Balmain hopes to fully “integrate entertainment in every single aspect of the market and communication strategy,” Diz said, a plan that has been in the works for four years.
“It’s more about the experience and the lasting brand relationship that you can make when you’re on site at a festival or watching a show,” Wortham said of Balmain’s entertainment bets. “Maybe they’ll come away with lifelong consumers who originally just thought, ‘oh I can’t afford this’ … then work their way up in the future.”
Additional reporting by Robert Williams.
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