Embracing Cultural Diversity in Fashion with Spidank

The assignment outlines a comprehensive social media campaign for the fashion brand 'Spidank', which aims to celebrate and promote cultural diversity by fusing African and American fashion styles. Set to run from November 15th, 2018, to January 31st, 2019, this campaign coincides with major fes...Read More

Spidank
African and American Fusion of Fashion
SOCIAL MEDIA CAMPAIGN
Brand: Spidank
Name of Campaign: Embracing Cultural Diversity
Student Name or ID
Digital PR and Communication

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Africans for a long time have admired the struggle by Americans for civil rights.
However, when Africans come to the United States, they develop a perception that black is not
beautiful and have insisted on maintaining a different identity. Spidank is a fashion line that
derives its designs from Africa. It utilizes African prints that were and are still used by many
African societies. The manly known print in Spidank is Ankara. Ankara is a print with a
characteristic of beautiful animal colors (Aronson 2015). The Ankara prints thus will be placed
on shirt collars and regions of the elbow on men’s blazers. The other parts of the clothing will be
made of synthetic spider silk. This harmonization of African and modern designs will try and get
rid of the perception by African Americans that Africans are the typical people who carry guns
and are always violent and have bad customs that no one would want to associate with. This
movement will, in the end, bring to a halt the perception that a dark skin complexion is a
justification for one’s inability to succeed.
The audience is a group of young and old people across more than five states in America.
There have been many differences that have built walls to separate black Americans and
Africans in the past. This has led to poor relationships between Africans and black Americans in
the classrooms and in the workplace. All these are for the blame of ethnicity, culture, nationality,
and ethnicity. In the past during a fashion show event, Stella McCartney showcased a traditional
African print known as Ankara. She used white models on the run way to showcase the designs.
This has for a long time sparked a debate that Stella never showcased an element of diversity in
the runway show. In our model, we are showcasing a classical African wear having Ankara
prints fused together with spider silk to tell the entire world that it is fine for white models to
showcase African wear (Okonkwo 2016).

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Americans like clothes that are made of conspicuous colors and have African elements in
them. They always want such designs made for dresses and suites that can be worn on official
duty. 90% of all Americans engage in social media each and every day. Every American in this
era owns a smart phone or a computer. Thus it’s now a common routine to check in to social
media to connect with the rest of the world. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are the most
known platforms utilized by Americans. They use social media all day, all week, and all
throughout the year. During the night and during the day. For this reason, this can be used to
showcase our designs to many people who will not make it to the event physically.
The brand Spidank stands for a fusion of Ankara and modern fashion like synthetic spider
silk. The brand name Spidank was formed from two words; Spider and Ankara (Zilberg 2017).
This brand, therefore, will teach the American people that it is fine for whites to showcase
African wear and it is okay to be black. This will to the extent help forge good relationships
between Africans and black Americans in the classroom and workplace. The tone of voice that
shall be utilized with this brand is a formal tone. We shall design a desktop application program
which will be utilized by anyone all world over to come up with designs like Spidank easily. The
application will help the designers choose best color combinations and provide a good simulation
model for the Spidank designs. This shall allow our brand to spread all the world over whether in
Africa, Asia, America, Australia and all other continents. We anticipate that our designs will be
worn by everyone regardless of their skin complexion or race (Rabine 2017).
The idea behind the inception of our brand is to demystify the difference that has existed
between Africans and black Americans in the United States for a long time (Franklin & James
2015). The fusion of a modern and African aesthetic in fashion shall in a way bring about
behavioral change among Americans (Anderson 2016). Our main purpose, however, is to bring

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to and end the blame on Stella McCartney that she never displayed cultural diversity in her
designs when she only used white models to showcase African designs. This is what we are
going to do differently. Black African models will be showcasing our designs and also showcase
some other pure synthetic Ankara designs.
In order to ensure that Spidank sells quickly, we will collaborate with a famous African
fashion line Gucci. This will help in getting deeply into Africa and also the United States.
To spread our brand, we will look for influencers in social media especially twitter to
spread the word. We will also create and pay for adverts on twitter and Facebook starting in
October 2018. We will find the best fashion bloggers in America and Africa to share our
campaign on their platforms (Hahn 2017).
The fashion campaign will fire up from 15th November 2018 until 31st of January 2019.
This will be the perfect time because Christians all over the world will be celebrating the birth of
Jesus Christ. This will be a time of present buying for loved ones, and people tend to have the
donation mindset during this time. The New Year 2018 will also be celebrated at this time.
Generally, this will be a time when everyone will be having a positive spirit and all things done
will be in a happy and positive tone. People will be visiting nice sceneries to watch New Year
fireworks, and these will be the places we need to go showcase Spidank (Walton 2017).
Activity Week
1(Nov
2018)
Week 2(Nov
2018)
December
2018
January 2019 Week 1 of
February
2019
Before the campaign
Create twitter handle,

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facebook page and the
hashtag
Patner with Gucci
designers
Ensure all the staff are
ready for the event
Make badges for all the
staff
The campaign
Event photo booths
Make a press release to
newspapers about the
event
Bloggers to make posts
on their platforms about
the event
After the Event
Do an overall assessment
Bloggers post about the
success of the event
Do a study on the people
who were involved in the
event to see if there is

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any behavioral change
The hashtag #Spidank shall be used to come up with user generated data. Furthermore, our
website shall have a page that will display updated Twitter feeds and Facebook posts on the
hashtag #Spidank.
Key messages to be use include the following:
 Let us deeply embrace our culture diversity.
 Shout out loud, I’m black, and I’m proud.
 Shout out loud, I’m white, and I’m proud.
 A shared complexion does not equal a shared culture.
 Whether black people reside on the Ivory Coast or the Atlantic Coast, we are all the
same.
References

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Anderson, V., 2016. Beyond ontological blackness: An essay on African American religious and
cultural criticism. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Aronson, L., 2015. African fashion, global style: Histories, innovation, and ideas you can wear.
Franklin, D.L. and James, A.D., 2015. Ensuring inequality: The structural transformation of the
African-American family. Oxford University Press, USA.
Hahn, H.P., 2017. African Dress: fashion, agency, performance by Karen Tranberg Hansen and
D. Soyini Madisoni. Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute, 87(1),
pp.218-220.
Okonkwo, U., 2016. Luxury fashion branding: trends, tactics, techniques. Springer.
Rabine, L.W., 2017. African Fashion, Global Style: histories, innovations, and ideas you can
wear by Victoria Rovine. Africa: The Journal of the International African
Institute, 87(1), pp.217-218.
Walton, H., Smith, R.C. and Wallace, S.L., 2017. American politics and the African American
quest for universal freedom. Taylor & Francis.
Zilberg, J., 2017. African Fashion, Global Style: Histories, Innovations, and Ideas You Can Wear
by Victoria L. Rovine. African Arts, 50(2), pp.92-93.