Is Substack the New Fashion Tiktok?
Is Substack the New Fashion Tiktok?
FSW examines the art of content platform strategy and why every brand needs one to create cultural moments and build real consumer connections.
If you clicked on this article because of the headline, you may be trapped in the brand content cycle of death.
Fashion and luxury brands, marketers, strategists, and content creators constantly try to stay on top of what’s new and what’s next in digital content. But, staying on top of content can be a vicious battle foredoomed to stress and FOMO.
Often, brands and creators get swept up in an endless loop of attempting to keep up with the latest trends on the latest “it” channel, all while trying to assess content performance (and, in turn, content “success” and customer engagement) based on the common standards for content engagement, including clicks, likes, and comments.
That said, the unique value-add of any content platform seems at best short-lived, particularly as these platforms vie for the top spot with users. Right now, it’s all about short-form video and shoppable commerce. Until recently, fashion and luxury brands and content creators have been obsessed with TikTok’s Gen Z-fueled video extravaganza, especially with the acceleration in social commerce and live shopping integrations with the launch of TikTok Shop earlier this year.
Yet, as with all hype cycles, it feels like some of the media frenzy around TikTok is beginning to transfer to Substack, with renewed attention to the old-school world of fashion journalism with more traditional bloggers and Insta-influencers tired of unpredictable algorithms and lower traffic in search of improved personalization and deeper community building with a reliable subscription model. Substack is now muddying the waters with their recent announcement that they are launching integrated short-form video to woo TikTok creators. This move sounds a lot like Instagram launching Reels a few years ago.
If TikTok was then and Substack is now, how do brands prepare for whatever known or unknown platform and content types are next?
For fashion and luxury, the future of digital content—and exiting the content cycle of death—lies in incorporating an overarching content platform strategy into your brand’s omnichannel content strategy that is separate from but guides your content marketing strategy.
Viral content, cultural moments, and content platform strategy
A lot has been written lately about how fashion and luxury brand marketing is now all about building “cultural moments.” Strategists like Ana Andjelic understand why brands must tap into consumer culture to create stories that truly connect.
In fashion and luxury, cultural moments, especially those expressed through social media, have one thing in common: they are all content. Specifically, they are viral content. As of late, these cultural moments are most often created through short-form video content.
In fashion and luxury, cultural moments, especially those expressed through social media, have one thing in common: they are all content.
Many of these cultural moments or pieces of viral content happen by chance or sheer luck, due to a combination of often hard-to-predict factors that make up the sociocultural zeitgeist of the day, the channel, and its audiences.
For fashion and luxury, one can easily predict that big events, like the Met Gala or New York Fashion Week, will beget big cultural moments.
But, other viral moments, such as the explosion of “The Bear” actor Jeremy Allen White’s Calvin Klein ad earlier this year, may feel more random, even though this type of ad stems from a long history of the brand’s underwear ads.
There are many theories on tactics to make content go viral. Yet, for fashion and luxury brands, the goal of content should always be more than just “going viral.” Whether you’re a heritage luxury brand, a mid-level fashion brand, or a multi-brand retailer, your brand content needs to feel relevant, consistent, and authentic. It should feel part of the cultural conversation and true to your brand’s DNA, vision, and values.
With content creation, the goal should always be to “produce content that connects in a meaningful way.” In this context, “meaningful” can be “to entertain” but must connote purpose.
To tell compelling stories, whether you are a brand or a content creator, your content needs a clear “why” that conveys your ideas and works to relate and connect with your target audiences. This is the first step to an effective content strategy.
Yet, creating cultural moments through content is about storytelling, which for marketing is much more than just your brand “why.” Effective narrative marketing executes about upon a deep understanding of how each platform works, its content types, features, and functionality, who its audiences are, and what these audiences expect from its content.
In short, fashion and luxury brand marketing needs an overarching content platform strategy closely tied to your content “why.” Effective content marketing strategy stems from tailored brand content strategy. To do this, you should consider creating a holistic content platform matrix.
Architecture of a holistic content platform matrix
A holistic content platform matrix in its simplest form is platform and channel-agnostic. It outlines basic strategic elements for content creation, management, and oversight for different platforms and content types. For fashion and luxury brands, most holistic content platform matrices are brand-specific and detail overarching content plans for existing and future channels, depending on the intent and goals of the brand.
Similar to a social media marketing strategy, a holistic content platform matrix contains information to guide channel-by-channel decision-making. However, it is purposefully specific to content and high level, as a snapshot way to capture your brand’s content intent and approach for different types of content platforms.
A holistic content platform matrix, like all content matrices, is usually housed in a spreadsheet, ideally in a shared company location, and functions as a living tool to capture current brand thinking about content. There are seven common ingredients to a holistic content platform matrix:
Define your high-level intent
At the top of your content platform matrix, you should detail your overall brand content vision or “why.” Ideally, this should match the vision statement from your content strategy. If you don’t have a documented content strategy, then write a high-level vision statement that explains the brand value proposition that you want to communicate through content.
Describe each channel & how it works
The first two columns of your holistic content platform matrix should be: Channel and Channel Description. This should explain what each channel is, how it works, and what makes it unique, along with any insights on the algorithm you want to include.
Detail audiences & their content preferences
The next two columns of your content platform matrix should be: Audiences and Audience Preferences. This should outline a general profile of the platform’s most common active users and other audiences you want to target, along with any information you know about their content needs, preferences, and habits. If your team has created content personas, you can also include those here.
List the granular content types
The next column should explain the types of content that you can use on the platform. Be granular and specific. For instance, TikTok is more than just short-form videos. You can also include image carousels, story highlight posts, and different types of short-form video content types, like educational videos, product promos, insider tips, etc.
Identify short-term tactics vs long-term strategies
The next two columns in your content platform matrix should include: Short-Term Tactics and Long-Term Strategies. Short-term tactics relate to specific trends or local marketing campaigns; whereas long-term strategies are items like “build out influencer marketing loyalty program.”
Explain the content risks
Arguably, the most important column in your content platform matrix is the Content Risks column. Here, you should explain any specific cons or risks for each channel, including any channel rules on overposting and sponsored content, legal rules, and brand policies on social media engagement through comments, likes, and other audience interactions.
Specify content success measures
The final column in your content platform matrix should detail the quantitative and qualitative success measures for each channel, including in-platform analytics and dashboards, comparative cross-channel channel analyses, and more story-based campaign feedback.
Pilot testing a holistic content platform strategy
One common way to implement a holistic content platform strategy is through content piloting or content proof-of-concept design. Indeed, the best way to do content strategy is to start small and adopt a test-and-learn approach to study and learn what your audiences like.
A perfect example of content platform strategy in action is the clever Alexis Bittar satirical film ad series unfolding for months on TikTok and Instagram. As viewers, we are watching a fashion brand try a serial content approach to short-form video in real-time. The New York Times notes that Bittar launched this marketing campaign to “create a community” that “he hopes would respond not just to the bangles and bags he has embedded in each episode but to the series’ crazily proliferating cast of barb-spewing characters.”
Through this social platform strategy, Alexis Bittar has effectively experimented with—and landed upon—defined unique video content types through the differentiation within TikTok between narrative brand videos (i.e. interviews with Alexis himself), more standard marketing promos, and the ongoing film pseudo-drama featuring celebrity cameos.
Holistic content platform strategy as a step towards full brand content strategy
Putting in place a holistic content platform strategy is a great first step toward tackling a wider omnichannel brand content strategy.
The reason our team at FSW keeps saying that luxury has a content problem and continually emphasizes the value of content strategy for fashion and luxury is that we feel most brands do not have it but desperately need it. Fashion and luxury content requires an attenuated, highly specific approach. To be blunt, brands cannot expect to survive, thrive, and scale content, get conversions, go viral, get good media coverage, and implement cost-saving tools like generative AI (genAI) without a content strategy in the longer term. Taking a diffuse approach to content with siloed is generally a recipe for disaster.
Like all content, digital content works best when it is backed by a documented plan and roadmap tailored to your brand’s specific goals, needs, audiences, and target channels. As we have explored, tools like genAI thrive on repeatable structures and consistency. But, a good portion of fashion and luxury brand content is not only unstructured but not technically “clean”—as in, the content is full of duplications, demonstrates inconsistent brand voice across channels, has version control issues, and likely lives in different systems.
To exit the content cycle of death and to purpose set a holistic content platform strategy, brands need an integrated, applied content strategy framework and an actual content operations model that provides the logic, methodology, processes, guidelines, and roadmap for how content is planned, managed, distributed, and measured over time.