What Fashion PR & Communications Professionals Need to Know Today

Discover the most relevant industry news and insights for fashion PR & communications professionals, updated each month to enable you to excel in job interviews, promotion conversations or perform better in the workplace by increasing your market awareness and emulating market leaders.

BoF Careers distils business intelligence from across the breadth of our content — editorial briefings, newsletters, case studies, podcasts and events — to deliver key takeaways and learnings tailored to your job function, listed alongside a selection of the most exciting live jobs advertised by BoF Careers partners.

Key articles and need-to-know insights for PR & communications professionals today:

1. Commercialising the Zeitgeist: Crafting a Successful TikTok Strategy

The image is a collage featuring various objects and people with their faces obscured by brown rectangles. On the left, there’s a label “COWBOY CARTER” alongside JW Anderson x Wellipets frog mules. Nara Smith beneath holds a cooking pot and pours milk into it. Sabrina Carpenter is to Nara Smith's left, with a Rhode lip gloss and phone case above. Next to that, Hailey Bieber rubs a product into her face, next to Beyoncé in white clothing. To the bottom right, Marc Jacobs displays long nails. Behind that image to the right is the chartreuse album cover of Charli XCX's "Brat". The background is divided into sections of different colors—pink and blue. There is also part of a Loewe tomato bag visible to the right of the album cover. — TikTok’s discovery-first approach and interest-graph algorithm has created distinctive use cases for fashion, beauty and retail brands across price points. The algorithm enables brands the chance for their content to reach any user. (BoF Studio)

In the last four years, the entertainment platform TikTok has amassed over 1 billion community members globally and 170 million monthly active members in North America, with US adults spending a movie’s worth of time on TikTok every day in Q2 2024. Usage and engagement rates cement TikTok’s role in cultural conversations, but it is the platform’s idiosyncratic content trends and forms of creative expression, along with the new form of influence its creators typify, that have led to the app shaping the zeitgeist today.

In BoF’s latest white paper, in partnership with TikTok, brand and marketing executives, independent analysts and TikTok business leaders share their insights on the best practices to acquire and engage audiences by honing platform-relevant brand, product and paid marketing strategies, with examples from Coach, E.l.f. Beauty, Marc Jacobs and many more.

Related Jobs:

PR Coordinator, Omnes — London, United Kingdom

Social Media Coordinator, Casablanca Paris — Paris, France

Communications Manager, Carolina Herrera — New York, United States

2. What to Do When Your Product Goes Viral

Going viral can be a make or break moment for a brand. (Courtesy Still Here, Hill House, Heaven Mayhem, Djerf Avenue; BoF Team)

While [going viral] promises many things — attention and visibility, word-of-mouth recommendations, a sales lift and, hopefully, long-term growth — it also comes with its challenges. When a viral product usually sells out — sometimes going through months worth of stock in less than 24 hours — it can leave brands scrambling to meet demand. A standout product can also build brand awareness, but there’s also the risk that’s all consumers will know you for.

“A brand doesn’t want to be completely pigeonholed into one product,” said Robert Burke, chief executive of retail consultancy Robert Burke Associates. “It’s great to ride on that viral moment, but [you have to] make sure that the brand stands for more than that.” If brands play their hand correctly, the momentary boost can be used to lay the foundation for a long-lasting business. But that requires not just reacting in the moment, but continuing to use the lessons learned as fuel for the future.

Related Jobs:

PR & Partnerships Specialist, Iris Van Herpen — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

PR Intern, Dôen — Los Angeles, United States

PR & Marketing Manager, Alexander McQueen — Shanghai, China

3. Beauty Brands’ New Method for Driving Loyalty

TYB and Kiki World are among the start-ups calling themselves "community commerce" platforms. (Courtesy)

Part loyalty programme, part fan club, “community commerce” platforms are the latest tech trend gaining traction with beauty’s biggest players. The benefits, brands argue, are worth it. The concept of creating a brand “community” has become paramount in beauty marketing, and both TYB and Kiki World allow brands to award loyalty points for purchases and brand-related social interactions. TYB also offers group chat functionality, where brands can send updates and communicate back and forth with members.

These platforms’ rise comes as beauty brands, facing stubbornly high ad and customer acquisition costs, are shifting their focus to customer retention. Though still in their early stages — TYB has been around for two years and Kiki World for one — they offer brands a way to experiment with new loyalty and communication formats to stay relevant with a Gen-Z audience, as well as ways to increase user-generated social content as it grows in importance compared to influencer marketing.

Related Jobs:

Global Media Strategy & Planning Senior Manager, Coach — New York, United States

Post-Production Specialist, Tiffany & Co. — New York, United States

Senior Content Associate, Chalhoub Group — Dubai, United Arab Emirates

4. Why Menswear Is Getting a Marketing Refresh

A campaign image from About_Blank's summer 2024 capsule collection — Menswear start-up About_Blank is one brand moving away from bland lookbooks into more lifestyle content. (About_Blank)

Today, a lot of menswear marketing mostly looks the same. Within menswear circles, there’s a growing criticism that brands are trying to appeal to customers who are conditioned by content creators and shopping lists to look for guides on how to dress well. An anonymous article published in the Substack newsletter Deez Links, fittingly titled “I hate menswear,” went viral in April and summarised the feeling: “These days, everyone’s personal style can be reduced to a Starter Pack.”

Menswear start-ups likely won’t completely abandon sales-generating marketing tactics, but some are starting to invest in the type of storytelling that will set them apart from their competitors. And though menswear doesn’t have the same history of constructing a fantasy in marketing as womenswear does, the labels that indulge in a bit of myth-making will avoid boring consumers down the line. “It’s about understanding how to be very savvy and smart and understand on a deeper cultural level, what is the meaning of our menswear,” Tony Wang, founder of luxury consultancy Office of Applied Strategy, said. “How do you reframe it to give it new life?”

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Social Media Producer, Kai — London, United Kingdom

Communications Director, Banana Republic — San Francisco, United States

Communications & Strategy Lead, Ralph Lauren — New Jersey, United States

5. Who Gets to Own a Meme?

Jools Lebron making a peace sign — Jools Lebron (Jools Lebron/Shutterstock)

This past month, there’s been no higher compliment than “very demure, very mindful.” Coined by Chicago-based content creator Jools Lebron, those four words have gained mass appeal thanks to an Aug. 5 TikTok video in which she uses them to describe how she presents herself at work. Since then, at least two people have filed applications to trademark various forms of the original expression. They notably did not include Lebron, who said she “dropped the ball” in not doing so quickly enough in a recently deleted video.

TikTok trends are no longer just fodder for internet chatter — they’re a form of currency in marketing. Brands look to what’s trending to dictate what products they promote and the language they use in their advertising, and creators like Lebron increasingly need to be prepared to protect themselves in case of a viral moment. Even as they do, there remains a question of how valuable these viral catchphrases are in a world when a cultural moment can come and go overnight.

Related Jobs:

Marketing Operations Manager, Hoka — London, United Kingdom

Social Media Manager, Iris Van Herpen — Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Senior Partnerships, Events & Collaborations Manager, Banana Republic — New York, United States

6. Why Fashion Loves the Next Generation of Tennis Stars

Ben Shelton, Taylor Fritz, Coco Gauff and Carlos Alcaraz are at the forefront of a new generation of marketable tennis stars. (Getty Images, BoF Team/Getty Images/BoF Team)

Tennis’s biggest names, Serena Williams and Roger Federer, have retired in recent seasons, paving the way for a new generation of stars to front their own fashion campaigns. Naomi Osaka ushered in this new chapter when she defeated Williams at the 2018 US Open, and at the forefront of the pack today is 21-year-old Carlos Alcaraz, widely considered the highest-paid tennis player in 2024 and an ambassador for LVMH, Rolex and Calvin Klein. Indeed, seven out of the 10 highest-paid tennis players this year, according to Sportico, are Gen-Z, or 27 and younger.

Interest in tennis right now is also driven by a confluence of cultural factors, from the growing popularity of sister sports such as pickleball and padel to the revival of retro trends that evoke a “vintage athletic country club” aesthetic, according to Craig Brommers, American Eagle’s chief marketing officer. Capitalising on the sport’s surging popularity presents an attractive opportunity for fashion brands, but they’ll need to get creative in identifying the right rising star — who won’t have the same safe-bet cachet as the sport’s most internationally recognised and now-retired figureheads. Coco Gauff, for instance, has 1.8 million Instagram followers, compared to Serena Williams’ 17.3 million.

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Event Producer, On — Berlin, Germany

Media Analyst, Kate Spade — New York, United States

Senior PR Manager, Gucci — Seoul, South Korea

7. Why Fashion’s New Leading Man Looks So Familiar

Glen Powell at a film premiere — Glen Powell (Getty)

After two decades as a journeyman actor, Glen Powell has gone on a leading man run rarely seen in today’s entertainment-sphere. After starring in the rom-com hit “Anyone But You,” action flick “Hitman,” and now, “Twisters,” he’s frequently discussed on social media and in the press in the same breath as Gosling, Cruise, Clooney, Pitt, Smith and other four-quadrant stars.

Fashion loves a new face. What makes Powell’s rapid ascent so interesting is that he isn’t, particularly: with his hair, jawline and traditional wardrobe, the actor represents a clean break from risk-takers like Jacob Elordi, Timothée Chalamet, Donald Glover, Colman Domingo, Pedro Pascal and Austin Butler who have dominated red carpet coverage and menswear blogs over much of the last decade. “It’s really hard to penetrate the culture across various segments of society these days,” said Doug Shabelman, chief executive of Burns Entertainment, which matches talent with brands. “You could see [Powell] doing an ad for pretty much everybody.”

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Senior Paid Social Media Manager, Carhartt WIP — Berlin, Germany

Marketing Operations Associate Manager, White House Black Market — Fort Myers, United States

Marketing & Communications Associate, Tory Burch – Tokyo, Japan

8. How Fashion Can Nail the Tricky Details of Sports Partnerships

Fashion is increasingly interested in working with athletes. (BoF Studio)

In May, Gucci released a campaign with Italian tennis star Jannik Sinner featuring a Gucci-logoed bag on his shoulder, waving to an imagined audience. Four words splayed across the photograph as he carries a non-white Gucci bag onto the court at Wimbledon: “Gucci is a feeling.” Also front and centre, though, was the Nike swoosh on Sinner’s hat. Luxury fashion brands are known for keeping tight control over where and how their products appear. They place strict full-look requirements on magazine editors and the influencers they invite to their runway shows. So why would Gucci and Louis Vuitton cede space to brands like Nike and Rolex in ads? Likely they didn’t have any other choice.

Sinner has a $158 million, 10-year deal with Nike. Typically, those sorts of partnerships come with exclusivity clauses and obligations, which means that when fashion brands want to work with athletes, it often means dealing with other brands. Still, working with athletes sometimes means that fashion brands must be willing to share the spotlight, even in their own advertising.

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External Communications Intern, AWWG — Madrid, Spain

Head of Brand, On — Zurich, Switzerland

Brand Marketing Manager, Chalhoub Group — Jeddah, Saudi Arabia