TRESemmé is leaving New York Fashion Week up to the influencers.
The Unilever-owned hair-care brand has tapped four YouTubers to act as correspondents of a sort, creating and broadcasting content during the week for TRESemmé on their own social platforms.
The content, produced by Marianna Hewitt, Casey Holmes, Paola Alberdi and Amy Lee of Vagabond Youth is expected to reach a global audience of five million, not including paid promotion.
The influencer-led strategy is a change in direction from the professionally-produced content TRESemmé has used in seasons past. The brand has historically produced backstage and get-the-look content on its own dime, using influencers like Harley Viera-Newton and Arielle Charnas of Something Navy to appear in tutorials and backstage interviews. That strategy extended outside of fashion week as well — Charnas last year was featured in a television commercial for the TRESemmé Beauty-Full Volume collection.
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But the brand decided to go in a different direction this year.
“It’s much more authentic to have these influencers communicate [on their own platforms],” said Laura DiMiceli, senior brand manager for TRESemmé. “This year the focus is on having them create the content. Our influencers are giving our audience a genuine and authentic glimpse of what fashion week life is like. She noted that the influencers will be covering TRESemmé-sponsored shows by going backstage and reporting on trends.
TRESemmé has sponsored New York Fashion Week for the past 17 seasons. This year, it is sponsoring the hair looks at Creatures of Comfort, Thakoon, Kate Spade, Jonathan Simkhai, Jenny Packham, Naeem Khan and Alice + Olivia.
She noted that TRESemmé is giving the influencers free reign to plan their own content. “It depends on what the girl is trying to convey to her audience,” said DiMiceli. “We expect there to be some hair tutorials, some trend recaps.”
Essentially, instead of TRESemmé unleashing a full production crew backstage to film an influencer interviewing a hairstylist, the influencer will go in herself, armed with her iPhone, and determine how she wants to cover it. And instead of get-the-look tutorials filmed in a studio with professional equipment, the influencers will do their own tutorials just how they normally would.
The target for all this New York Fashion Week content is — of course — Millennial women. Research by TRESemmé found that 69 percent of consumers in this group have purchased a product recommended by an influencer. “Millennial women are quite discerning, and they’re seeking out brands recommended by women they trust.”
A source close to TRESemmé noted that the brand is aware that their content performs better when it comes directly from the influencer, as opposed to a heavily-produced campaign featuring the influencer as it would a typical celebrity.
When asked about the longevity of this influencer-led strategy, DiMiceli noted ‘We’ll see it how it goes.’ But our source suggested this is what the future of TRESemmé’s influencer program looks like.
“You probably won’t see an influencer in a televised commercial from [TRESemmé] again anytime soon,” said the source.