Creativity and Marketing

The Fuel for Success

Eleonora Pantano, Eleonora Pantano

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800713321
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

Creativity and Marketing: The Fuel for Success presents a diverse collection of theoretical analysis, real world evidence, and case study applications to synthesize emerging studies on how creativity is important for marketing success.
Exploring themes in strategic marketing, creativity in management and communication as well as creativity in new product development, Creativity and Marketing examines a wide range of cutting-edge developments at the intersection of marketing and creative practice, including brand management, social media management, consumer behaviour, and value creation.
This collection will bridge theory and practice in a fast moving and exciting field and will provide scholars of marketing, branding and consumer behaviour with lessons and strategies to implement in their own fields.

Section I

Creativity in Marketing Management

Chapter 1

Creative Marketing and the Clothes Swapping Phenomenon

Claudia E. Henninger

Abstract

Swapping as part of collaborative consumption is not a new phenomenon per se, but might gain increased importance after the recent COVID-19 pandemic that has seen a shift in consumer attitudes, consumption, and disposal behaviour. Swapping as one form of collaborative consumption, however, is currently neither mainstream nor target towards the general population, but rather a niche population (secondhand consumers). With sustainable issues (environmental, economic, and social) remaining a key concern, and consumers seeking to dispose of their garments, swapping might become an increasingly attractive alternative, yet currently it may not be communicated as such. This chapter explores the potential of creative marketing communications to enhance the uptake of swapping in order to overcome a key challenge in the industry: fashion waste.

Keywords: Collaborative consumption; swapping; fashion Industry; creative marketing; sustainability communications; challenges

Learning Outcomes

• To gain a better understanding of the fashion industry during the COVID-19 pandemic which magnified sustainability issues it is facing.
• To investigate current issues in the fashion industry.
• To define and critically evaluate collaborative consumption and swapping practices.
• To explore what type of creative marketing swapping events utilise and how these could be enhanced further.

1. Introduction

This chapter provides an insight into collaborative consumption in the fashion industry (here swapping practices), thereby centring on creative marketing, which, ideally, enhances the meaningful novelty of an item and thus, moves away from competing solely on price (Andrews & Smith, 1996; Fillis, 2002; Fillis & McAuley, 2000). Fillis and McAuley (2000, p. 8) point out that ‘creativity can be messy, unexpected, a mystery, or merely frustrating’, yet for marketers it can also be very rewarding, as it provides an opportunity to look outside the figurative box and focus on interrelated aspects. To explain, swapping, the exchange of idle capacity without paying an access fee (Henninger et al., 2020), could be seen as the combination of secondhand fashion and ‘retailing’, yet due to its lack of a monetary exchange, its association with sustainability and the sharing economy, meaning can be changed from being solely transactional to becoming emotional – an aspect that is looked at within this chapter.

This chapter puts an emphasis on events that have dominated the majority of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it could be suggested that this pandemic is (hopefully) a one-off event and thus, may be dated in relevance, it is argued that COVID-19, is just one in many events that have impacted the fashion industry and magnified issues surrounding sustainability (e.g. Blazquez, Henninger, Alexander, & Franquesa, 2020; Brydges & Hanlon, 2020; Henninger, Alevizou, & Oates, 2016). To explain, sustainability issues have been discussed since the 1960s, when people became more conscious of the impact their consumption practices have on the natural environment (e.g. Brown, 2011; Peattie, 1995). In the 1980s and early 1990s, media attention centred on labour law issues, which re-surfaced with the collapse of Rana Plaza, a factory accident, in which thousands lost their lives (Business of a Better World, 2012; Parveen, 2014a, 2014b). Moreover, Channel 4’s (2010) Dispatches programme has reported on ‘fashion’s dirty secret’, thereby uncovering ‘shocking’ working conditions in fashion companies in the UK. Thus, it may not be surprising that there has been increase in academic publications focussing on modern slavery and its legislation in the fashion industry (e.g. Benstead, Hendry, & Stevenson, 2019).

Thus, COVID-19 in this chapter is used to illustrate challenges the fashion industry is facing and that have been magnified as a result of the pandemic, yet it is argued that it remains relevant for the future, as the issues highlighted remain and need to be addressed in order to create a more sustainable future. Creativity marketing is one solution that can enable organisations to communicate with their current and potential customer base and create a relationship bond that has the power to facilitate more sustainable consumption, as will be outlined in the chapter.

2. The Fashion Industry Pre- and Post-COVID-19

The twenty-first century was predominantly concerned with creating a more sustainable future, with the United Nations (UN, 2020) having moved ‘sustainability’ from a simple buzzword to becoming a top global priority. Sustainability’s most iconic definition was published by the Brundtland Commission (WCED, 1987) as focussing on the current generation’s needs without compromising those of future ones, thereby centring on social, environmental, and economic aspects and its related issues (Athwal, Wells, Carrigan, & Henninger, 2019; Henninger et al., 2016). Until quite recently, media outlets covered Greta Thunberg’s call for climate action (Carrington, 2019) and the various events organised by the Extinction Rebellion (2020), yet times have changed. With the COVID-19 outbreak, sustainability has arguably taken a backseat, with fashion retailers currently fighting for survival, and thus, potentially spending less on sustainability measures as originally anticipated (Berg, Haug, Hedrich, & Magnus, 2020; Brown, 2020; Orlova, 2020).

Pre-COVID-19 the fashion industry could best be described as a thriving sector, being the third largest manufacturing industry, only overtaken by the automotive and technology sector, and estimated to be worth US$1.4 trillion in 2018 (Berg et al., 2020; Lissaman, 2018). Growth rates in 2019 were predicted to be between 3.5% and 4.5%, and thus, seen to continuously increase (Danziger, 2019). The economic worth of the industry and the growth rates highlights two key aspects: first, fashion concerns every single person, as it provides a basic commodity (WRAP, 2020a) and is more than simply a trend. Fashion in the sense of garments, showcases our personality and belonging to social groupings (e.g. hipster, punk, and goth), it highlights our desire to be unique and creative, as well as our lifestyle. As such, fashion visualises who we are or who we want to be (e.g. Myzelev, 2013; Powell & Gilbert, 2009), which can be enhanced through creative marketing, by focussing on meaning (Mkhize & Ellis, 2020). Second, the fashion industry, as alluded to, is a key employer, as manufacturing fashion is highly labour intensive and supply chains are long and complex spanning often across the globe (Henninger, Alevizou, Oates, & Cheng, 2015, chapter 6). Yet, the economic worth and the industry’s glamour, enhanced by catwalk shows and TV series, for example, Top Model, come at an ethical and environmental cost, such as labour law violations, modern-day slavery, and waste, with garments being wrongfully disposed of in landfill (e.g. Environmental Audit Committee, 2019; Henninger et al., 2016; McFall-Johnsen, 2020; UN, 2019). The latter aspect can be linked to the Environmental Audit Committee’s (2019) Fixing Fashion Report, which highlights that the current consumption and production patterns (take–make–use–dispose) are leading to a ‘throwaway culture’, hyper consumption practices, and waste problems in the UK and other countries.

Enhanced by the emergence of the fast fashion (take–make–use–dispose) phenomenon, clothing production has doubled between 2000 and 2015 (WRAP, 2020a), with companies increasingly competing on price as opposed to meaningful novelty (creative marketing) (Andrews & Smith, 1996; Blazquez et al., 2020). The cheap prices in retail stores enhance the consumers’ ‘fashion appetite’ (Sharma & Hall, 2010), which has environmental costs in that more raw materials and finishings are needed, and CO₂ emission increased as products are delivered to the end-consumer, as well as social costs, with manufactures feeling the need to cut corners (e.g. safety measures and wages) in order to stay competitive (Blazquez et al., 2020; Henninger, Alevizou, Goworek, & Ryding, 2017; Henninger et al., 2016; Skov, 2008). To explain, the increased pace of fashion consumption and the pressure to produce items that are ‘cheap and cheerful’ can have devastating consequences, as witnessed in the Rana Plaza incident in 2013 that saw thousands of garment workers lose their lives (Burke, 2013; Parveen, 2014a, 2014b; WRAP, 2020a).

The year 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic brings forward further challenges as the fashion industry will be ‘faced with 27 to 30 percent contraction in global revenues’ (Berg et al., 2020, p. 5), and is ‘currently focused on crisis management and contingency planning’ (Berg et al., 2020). Various fashion retailers and well-known department stores had to go into administration or reduce their physical stores in an attempt to stay afloat, which had and still has consequences across the supply chain (Vogue, 2020). Jobs in the retail sector, as well as along the supply chain, are lost due to current stock that remains unsold, and orders being cancelled (Vogue, 2020). Whilst the post-COVID-19 world accentuates social issues in the fashion industry, environmental issues have, even for just a short period, improved, as the standstill of manufacturing sites has meant reduced pollution, in form of CO₂ emission, and consumers becoming increasingly conscious of the impact their purchases have on the natural and social environment (Berg et al., 2020; Edited, 2020; WRAP, 2020b).

Thus, we are currently at the proverbial crossroads, in that we can try to go back to the way things have been pre-COVI...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Section I. Creativity in Marketing Management
• Section II. Creativity, Design Thinking and Innovation
• Section III. Creativity Challenges and Opportunities for Marketing
• Index