Hi Guys,
As explained, we came back from Barcelona with many insights from local fashion business professionals. We interviewed Laura Jouve, founder of a PR agency. Enjoy!
Hi Laura, can you tell us more about yourself and your company?
I am Laura, 28 years old, French born and raised who moved to Barcelona 6 years ago. I created my company LVJ Production & Management 2 years ago after 5 years working in communication agencies. With this company I decided to focus, not only on PR, but also in talent management and production. Why so? During my years in agency, I saw many creative people having no idea of what should be their next step, the next door to knock on and get advices from so many people they got lost. My goal is to get them in the right path following their creative vibe. During this amount time, I worked with talented photographers, designers, entrepreneurs and we learned so much from each other – that’s what my company is: a hive where you can just focus on your talent.
Why should a small fashion business take care of PR?
PR is your face to the world. You cannot be noticed without PR either you want to have a very small article in your favorite magazine or have a superstar wearing your design. I often say to my clients that online PR for their brand is more or less like their private social networks accounts: you don’t want to look bad on them and usually you do your best to look good and interesting. It goes the very same with offline – with a recruitment example. If you want people to buy you brand, you have to convince them to, to show them its good fabric, quality, customer care, money to invest…. Never forget that 1 bad critic will be louder than 20 good ones.
What common mistakes do fashion designers usually make in PR?
Humm, good question. I would say that there are four big mistakes. If not speaking about not caring about PR, I’d say that first will be the lack of brand materials (press kit, lookbook, website…) – people need to learn your story. Then neither have white background pictures of their designs nor active social media accounts. And the last mistake would be to not have a pre-determined budget for samples – you cannot send every people a free sample! Especially if it doesn’t give you great exposure.
When should fashion brands contact you?
To be honest, it really depends on what the brand expects from the PR agency. We provide lot of services to help talents and brands so I would say brands can contact us more or less.
Whenever they feel the need for an extra hand or an outside point of view. Now regarding other PR agency, I think they should be contacted when brands have a proper design, a brand ethic and definition, an idea of a market to go into and a budget to dedicate to PR.
What advice could you give to a fashion business that doesn’t have the means to hire a PR agency?
Be smart and organized! First define yourself as a brand: which words do you want to be associate with? And stick to it! No one wants to buy a brand that doesn’t care about its customers, without social networks cool feeds and with an ugly website. But still no one want to buy a brand talking about non related things so stick to yourself and embrace who you are as a designer / a brand. If you have a bit of money to spend, please get a cool website and a few extra designs you could use as templates for your social networks. You can use lots of programs on internet to get your publications published automatically so use them! Try to connect with the best representative persons / brands regarding the definition of your brand and be patient. Getting noticed is a long and hard work but you’ll make it!
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Wondering how to define yourself as a brand?
Find more tools to help you through your fashion business plan, with the number one FXF guide. “The Fashion Business Plan” by Bako Rambini is available on Amazon.
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