How the iPad Will Help Evolve Fashion PR

Interview Magazine was the first fashion magazine to jump on the iPad application bandwagon, and boy did they do a fabulous

job. Hearing all the hoop-la, it made be think about what the iPad means to fashion PR.

Interview Magazine’s iPad app integrates capabilities to link directly to ecommerce sites, video components, share favorite magazine products via Twitter and Facebook, and in a few weeks allow users to email products, and online chat about items in the magazine. Apparently, more features are in the works. But these features can really help enhance and ease some duties of the fashion PR world.

Here are some ways that the iPad can help us marketers out:

1) Increased Brand Awareness on Social Media Outlets. For many small fashion brands, having their products place in a magazine iPad app would be highly beneficial. Not only would that fashion brand get product placement in the publication for readers to see, but if a reader “likes” or “favorites” the item, and shares with her Twitter or Facebook community, it increases the brand awareness for the label more than it could in the print publication alone.

2) Easier & More Efficient Look Book Distribution & Sample Requests. Look books can take months after final approval to get printed and distributed to key buyers, editors, and stylists. Instead of waiting for hard copies and shipping, developing an iPad app for the look book to be sent to key fashion clients would cut back on time and expenses.

While cost is a big incentive, so is efficiency and accuracy. Look books primarily help the PR, marketing, and sales departments visually represent to clients the latest collection and are used as a sales tool and for sample requests.  Through the iPad technology, look books could have the capability to take orders for buys, or sample requests for press pieces making communication more efficient and organized.

3) More Direct Traceable Results. When a brand you work with gets a photo credit in a magazine its a big deal. But in traditional print you can’t directly see what impact your product placement has on a consumer. Through iPad magazine apps where just about anything could have a link back to the product’s ecommerce site, now that placement can be traceable. PR could just have to get used to working with data and stats more often. Clicks on your product, Tweets, Facebook shares, email shares, and impressions could all be viable statistics to PR efforts as iPad magazine applications evolve.

Overall, Product Placement Becomes More Valuable. Getting your samples placed in a magazine is great press. You can

pat yourself on the back when you send out the press credit, but if you get placement in a publication that also has an iPad app, it can be much more rewarding and more valuable to your client. Its going to be an exciting road ahead to see how both the PR and marketing worlds evolve to take advantage of what the iPad has to offer.