6 takeaways from our webinar: Defining the new brand journey with creative brand agency Mørch & Rohde

Tackling the same topics of how the internet, social media, globalization, and digitalization changed the game, we invited Mørch & Rohde, a successful Danish strategic and creative agency that offers 360-degree branding, communication, concept development, SoMe, and PR solutions for Scandinavian and international fashion/lifestyle brands. Their clientele includes notable labels such as IRO, ba&sh, Martin Asbjørn, SAND, and Arne Aksel to name a few.

Our co-founder Jens Hamborg Koefoed sat down with Lotte Mørch Monchamp and Sarah Rohde Olsen, respectively Co-founder/Creative Director, and Co-founder/CEO of Mørch & Rohde to discuss how they help brands obtain a unique and strong market position in Scandinavia, cover the evolution of influencer marketing and classic PR, advise on how to implement a successful PR and content-based strategy.

Brands are living organisms with their own personality, we need to convey the brand stories through different channels and help them do content, and that’s something you can’t do if you don’t understand the purpose of the brand. It’s important because the end-users nowadays don’t just buy a dress, they buy into a community. 

Back in the days you could rely on a few editors and print magazines but now you have to create content for Instagram, TikTok, retailers, etc…Having a clear story and a red thread across different channels is important to maintain authenticity, especially with younger consumers who are so informed. There’s a huge need for content constantly and it’s much higher than just a few years ago. 

Previously it was only the printed press, key editors, and buyers that were invited to the runway shows and determined the success of a brand. Today it’s more democratic, there’s a large crowd that can actually make a brand successful. It’s somehow good for the industry but also difficult for a brand because there are many touch points and people have to be convinced about a brand’s uniqueness. Instagram, YouTube, web-shop, retailers, wholesalers, print/online magazines, and content creators all need a different brief which translates in different ways. A tendency we see a lot is to also prioritize the budget to different channels and a lot of brands are spending or allocating more budget to content shoots.

Before, a brand would sell with a nice printed catalog or lookbook. Today, it’s completely different – most brands use social media and that’s why the content for social media is so important. The first thing people will do is look into your Instagram, so the top 9 pictures are the DNA of the brand. The content needs to develop in this sense. Social media needs to be updated every day, so you need a lot of content for those platforms and create more shoots to build content for a brand. Cropping of the images is also significant, you need different types of images for different channels so a lot of times the assets produced come in hundreds.

It’s also very important that you create authentic pictures and images – for example, behind-the-scenes content is interesting for the end-user. Of course, it’s important to use classic campaign images. But it’s impactful to create images to build a community, you don’t sell a product you sell a story. Mørch og Rohde has a team to do behind the scenes, and a videographer to do shoots for social media every month. 

Find the relevant brand ambassadors, a lot of your time should be dedicated to finding the relevant people for brands to work with. There needs to be a strategic fit, for the content created with the influencer to be authentic. Without the strategic fit, the follower will be confused as to why those two are working together.

Think about the purpose of your influencer campaign, brands often come up with a list of demands like: they need to drive sales, build a community, help with a new brand positioning, and that the specific influencer is followed by specific people, etc… But you can’t have it all, and you need to assess what the campaign is for. Some campaigns are to drive sales, some are made to drive brand awareness to enter a certain market. Having a purpose behind your influencer campaign is crucial. Have a strategic talk before choosing your brand ambassadors. 

Give them creative freedom and trust, brands need to make sure they have trust in the influencer they pick. The influencer knows their platform the best and engages with their followers every day. Don’t be scared to give control to a content creator, because it’s a partner that will convey your brand message through their platform in their own best way.

Gather your community, you can do a lot of cool activation online and drive a lot of engagement and sales for webshops but being able to showcase your brand universe in a physical setting is of course something different. To invite press and influencers and create cool experiences for the consumer where they can be a part of your community and brand story is very valuable. Of course, it is still important to work with both digital and physical strategies as they often go together. If you create an amazing physical experience, that’s also where you will see a lot of beautiful content materialize. 

Physical events make great content, when brands do events, we always ask if this event is instagrammable; is it worth taking out a phone to take pictures? Think of Jacquemus and his beautiful shows and see how much content came out of that, you still see those pictures popping in your Instagram feed. So it’s still important to work with these physical channels because they can have a huge effect on digital awareness as well.

Only host events with a purpose, before the pandemic we saw a lot of events, now brands must know that they should never host an event if there’s no purpose behind it. The press, influencers, and stylists are invited to so many, if you are hosting an event just to have one don’t do it, just use that budget for a content shoot instead. Everyone is so busy, so you need to have something to offer and meaning behind your event. 

Lotte Mørch Monchamp – Founder and CEO of the sales agency Mørch, and Co-Founder and Creative Director of Mørch & Rohde

She has worked in the fashion industry for more than two decades and is known in the industry for her ability to introduce international fashion brands to the Scandinavian market. In Mørch & Rohde, Lotte oversees all creative processes and advises brands on how to develop a strong visual identity, where she combines creative thinking with a commercial mindset.

Sarah Rohde Olsen – Co-Founder and CEO of Mørch & Rohde

She has a background in consulting and is a subject matter expert in positioning and brand strategy. Her specialty is further in Influencer Marketing, where she advises brands on working with Influencers from a strategic perceptive and is also the agent of Josefine Hj.

Ines is the Research and Marketing Manager at VOCAST.  She previously worked in the beauty industry and is now an expert in social media and digital marketing. Every day she helps design-driven brands navigate digital trends and carry out their marketing and brand strategies effortlessly.

​5 takeaways from our webinar: Defining the new brand journey – what is the future role of fashion trade shows?

1. The role of trade shows has changed because of digital tools but brands need to know how they are still relevant in the future:

Christina: We need trade shows in the future and we actually had a confirmation of that during Covid. We got feedback from buyers that they were really missing physical that interaction. That’s because they are craftspeople, they really appreciate the tactility of our business. For them to do their job right, it’s also again getting the inspiration, meeting the brands, being there, getting their hands into the material.

Also, we got a confirmation of the long-standing role of the trade show, it’s very much about getting together and lifting together. It also means a lot for convenience for buyers, convenience for the industry and just getting together with the people you work with. We shouldn’t underestimate the whole community part of it – getting a lot of people with relevance together in one spot.

Edwina: Brands that are successful in the market today are the ones that are putting their efforts into multi-channels. Wholesale is still very important, touching and feeling, the discovery part. Buyers are still coming to place orders at trade shows. Then you have the e-commerce part, the direct-to-consumer. A lot of brands are focusing on ways to contact their consumers directly. Then you have the social media aspect and the content part.

I think brands are not diversifying their offering, but it doesn’t eliminate the fact that you still want to present at a trade show, you still want to show your initiatives, what you’re working on, and you want to tell your brand story. Many brands treat trade shows as a transactional thing but it’s also a way to showcase who you are and state your brand DNA, and a lot of buyers come to discover just that.

2. The transactional element of trade shows is changing due to new services and offerings:

Christina: People do place orders digitally, but a lot of the discoveries are taking place at the trade shows. Before we could open our doors twice a year and people had to come in to see the new summer collection or winter collection, now people trade all through the year. But we still have the relevance that brands can attract and show who they are. It’s a lot about brand DNA and the marketing part has always been a big part of trade shows, but I would say it’s even bigger now.

Edwina: That shift has also resulted in the way that we curate our shows. It’s not less trade, it’s still important, but it’s also focusing on an event. You’re now inspiring people more with events and keeping them on the trade show floor longer with activations, we’re curating panels, and providing education for the attendees coming – whether it’s a buyer, or press, or an influencer.

You’re navigating the show, with trade in mind but also having different experiences to connect with the fashion industry as a whole. Trade show producers now are thinking about other things that they can add to create more value at the shows.

Christina: We’re pitching an experience for the buyers and also a lot of the buyers come to the trade shows to experience “new” – to get new knowledge. So us delivering the convince of getting the relevant brands together and the knowledge part, where is the industry going in terms of content, in terms of sustainability. They need to know all these things. We provide that for them, we do a curated show that they can walk through and get these things done.

Edwina: Sustainability is a big conversation obviously, we all have a responsibility to do better. So we are now asking specific questions for brands on the contract when they sign up. We have retailers who are looking to identify those brands at the show. That’s another way in which we’re changing, we’re also using those important factors to re-merchandise our shows and to make the wayfinding easier.

3. Trade shows still are an important place of discovery for buyers, retailers, and industry professionals:

Christina: I know from many of the buyers it’s about them getting out there. There are other brands that are doing very successfully online, having a great social media presence, but upcoming brands still need that discovery. Buyers need good quality, good products, and that’s not always something you discover online. We shouldn’t underestimate the salesperson either that’s a craft as well; the presentation of the collection. Meeting the salesperson there is a totally different buying experience.

4. Consumers are becoming more complex and conscious in their purchasing, trade shows can curate the right brands for the retailers:

Edwina: We want to be more informed. I want to know a bit more about the brand, I’d love to know where it’s produced, I’d like to know if it supports a community that needs it, and I want to know if some of the brands I purchase from are Black-owned for example, or minority-owned. These questions are coming up. Gen-Z and Millennials have clearly stated that they want more information before they hit purchase so we, as trade show producers, have a responsibility to look for those brands.

5. Brands need to elevate and upkeep their digital content to stay relevant, even for physical events and shows:​

Edwina: We are being asked by brands how we can support them in telling their story and their messaging. In our screening process, before we accept any brands into our shows, we’re looking at their look books, their line sheets, we’re looking at their Instagram. I think now Instagram is becoming more popular than the actual website, so we have a team that’s looking at multiple digital ways for the brands to tell their stories.

Sometimes if brands aren’t able to do it in an efficient way or if it’s not cohesive, we may miss the mark on a great brand. We are digitally accepting brands into our shows and that becomes an important part of the process.

Christina: It is still very much up to the brands. We lend them our platform, but it’s still up to them to produce the content and have enough content. Most brands, thankfully, are really aware of this and they’re really good at it.

We doubled our work in the sense that we now do both digital and physical. But our main part is still the physical, the digital part really supports our brands and buyers before they enter the show space. You can never fully swap the two, we got a confirmation that physical trade shows are still needed because we couldn’t translate the things we do in the physical space to the digital.

5 key takeaways from our webinar: How do fashion brands become known today? – a buyer’s perspective