Zara's Social Media Campaign: Reaching New Audiences in Japan

This report details a social media campaign strategy for Zara, aiming to reach new audiences in Japan by leveraging social influencers and brand ambassadors. The report analyzes consumer behavior, brand values, content planning, and legal/ethical considerations specific to the Japanese market. It outlines audience personas, focusing on geographic, demographic, and psychological motivations of Japanese consumers. The campaign's tone of voice, aesthetics, and key messages are defined, along with the types of content, including visual content, and an editorial calendar. The campaign's content revolves around a fashion blogger and college students, suggesting Zara outfits for a transformation. The report also addresses crisis management and provides a rationale for the campaign, emphasizing the importance of engaging content, influencer marketing, and maintaining momentum to increase market share in Japan. Finally, it covers the measurement of success.

Social Media Campaign of ZARA
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Fashion
In order to reach new audiences, Zara would like to build relationships with social
influencers. Devise a strategy that places social influencers and brand ambassadors at the
center. Consider consumer behaviour, brand values, content planning, legal and ethical
requirements, and crisis planning.
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About Zara
Zara as a brand lists as 46th valuable brand which is valued at a whopping 13 billion dollars
(Forbes, 2019). Hailing from the retail industry, it is surprising had its small start, in the year
1974 in Spain (Lopez and Fan, 2009). As of today, the brand is spread out to 96 countries
worldwide. It has about 2200 stores globally, operating from different regions. It is one of the
flagship brands from Inditex Group. The unique ability which acts as strength is the ability to
create a new product and make it available in stores within 2 weeks of short period.
Sometimes, this process takes about 6-8 months to complete successfully, sometimes without
any assuredness that it would be liked by the customers. Biggest markets of Zara is Spain
followed by China, France, Russia and Italy (Ghemawat, Nueno and Dailey, 2003).
Zara’s chief USP, as discussed, is to come up with new products in a record time. Also,
Zara’s success is also because of its ability to expand to different regions with finesse and
create a brand success story with it (Ghemawat, Nueno and Dailey, 2003). Over recent few
decades, all the more, Zara has been successful to also leave a mark on its online stores. The
youth visualize themselves in a Zara and exude elegance, trendy and fashionably sparkling.
Zara can boast of the biggest clothes brand store chains across the world. Zara never fails to
meet the demands of its customers.
It has thus decided to venture into Japan and create another success story. The report
following presents a social media campaign presenting details from perspective of audience
persona, brand, campaign, key messages, content, editorial calendar, use generated content,
social influencers, crisis management and measurements of success. In the end, a rationale
has also been provided for the campaign.
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1.Audiences personas
Geographic and Demographic Traits
Zara has expanded its business on an international level in many countries. With Japan, it is
very vigilant because the market exhibits high risks owing to cultural differences (Ashley,
Christy, and Tracy, 2015). The geographical traits of the targeted audiences indicate that they
belong to a humid and hot climate. The presence of tropical and subtropical rainforest in
Japan makes the climate quite humid (Boulianne, 2015). Also, there is fluctuation in weather,
it might be hot and humid or just too windy. The demographic traits of the audience of Japan
includes the population density, level of education, economic status, religious affiliations, and
many more aspects. The high population density of Japan has a positive effect on the fashion
industry. People opt for high education in Japan and economically, they are rich and
considered as a prospering economy, which attracts the foreign companies.
Psychological Motivations
In terms of fashion, the most motivating factor in Japanese culture is Expressive fashion
which involves adding twists and making it popular to express the unique personality. The
fashion trends in Japan is “Avantgarde”, the dresses with peppy looks motivates them the
most. They do not prefer dull clothes and accessories, especially the youth (Tuten and
Solomon, 2017). However, there are certain conservations about dressing styles. Showing of
too much cleavage is not appreciated, people prefer more modest styles. However, there is
difference when travelling from urban to rural regions. In urban regions crop tops, short
skirts, hot-pants are casual and regularly seen, however the psychology changes when
shifting towards rural regions, people do not opt for such clothes and stick to conservatory
dressing styles and more traditional in fact, like a kimono.
Social-media Engagement
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According to a survey, more than 70% of Japanese use the social media platform to research
about the brand before purchasing any item. The most used social media for brand research in
Japan is Twitter, about 53% of the population use this before making any purchase, followed
by Facebook and Instagram with 29% and 43%.
2. Brand
About the Brand
Zara is a Spanish clothing retailer serving the customers globally with its wide range of
apparels along with the accessories and is considered as the largest retailer of apparel
worldwide. The brand stands for the integration of elegance and sophistication in fashion at a
premium price. The brand Zara is positioned in the market as a classy and high quality
fashionable items following the trends of fashion (Lopez and Fan, 2009).
Tone of Voice
Tone of voice is considered as a communication tool which is used by the company to build
relationship with the customers (Kingsnorth, 2019). The brand Zara stands for passion for
fashion and hence, the tone of voice for the campaign should be enthusiastic and heartfelt. It
should not be boring and tiresome. The tone of voice for the campaign should be expressive
and action oriented in order to engage the audiences (González and Wang, 2016).
Fitting the campaign idea with the brand
The brand Zara is eccentric and the campaign idea stands out with funky and remarkable
activities. The campaign will talk about the uniqueness of the brand in a different and
interactive manner (Scott, 2009). The authenticity along with the credibility will be
maintained in the campaign and hence will fit the brand Zara.
Aesthetics of the campaign
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The aesthetics of this social media campaign by Zara will involve the connectivity with the
audiences, increasing the awareness of the brand, creating the brand loyalty, increasing the
traffic, and increasing the sales volume (Zhu and Chen, 2015) (Kawasaki and Fitzpatrick,
2014).
3. Campaign
Campaigning Idea
The campaign idea for the brand Zara in Japan should be an interactive content which can be
published on the social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. The
content would feature a fashion blogger of Japan and two college going students who
approached the fashion blogger for some fashion related tips for an event. The fashion
blogger in that case, would suggest the peppy outfits and accessories of Zara for the
transformation of the looks from simple to sizzling (Parveen, Jaafar and Ainin, 2015).
Reason for this campaign
Zara is a Spanish apparel retailer which expanded its business on an international level and
recently entered the fashion market of Japan which is culturally diversified. The main reason
for this campaign is to introduce the new range of fashionable items which is customized as
per the culture of Japan (Escola Superior de Comunicação Social and Bruno, 2011) . The
fashion blogger in this context, suggested the new range of fashionable outfits by Zara in
order to crate the brand awareness among the people of Japan.
Call to action
The call to action in this campaign will induce the target audience with a piece of content in
which the fashion blogger of Japan suggests the peppy outfits of Zara in order to transform
the looks from simple to sizzling (Waddington and Earl, 2012). The content relevantly
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presented the brand with its unique feature of transformation of fashion trends (Kingsnorth,
2019).
Content Trends
The content trends that would be followed in this campaign is engagement of the audience
that focuses on the significant interactions to make the content more appealing and
interesting. Influencer marketing is also a part of social media campaigning which is
considered as a paid sponsorship of the brand (Kemp, 2015). The social media is not only
used as a medium for creating the brand awareness but it also enhances the sales (Russell,
2011; CIPR, 2014).
Content traits
The content traits in this campaign would be the collaboration with the fashion blogger
wherein, the fashion blogger would suggest the outfits of Zara. The content traits are
authenticity of the brand, hashtags for the events of the college, promoting the fashion culture
of Japan and keeping the content simple (Fan and Gordon, 2014).
4. Key messages
Key messages of the campaign
The key messages are the core messages that the companies want to convey to their target
audiences (Waddington and Earl, 2012; Castells, 2013). The target audience of Zara in Japan
ranges from the age group of 18 to 30. Through this campaign, Zara wants to create the brand
awareness among the youth of Japan by conveying the message of availability of wide and
unique range of collections of outfits and fashionable items. The content would also convey
the transformation of the looks from simple to sizzling because of the expressive range of
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fashionable apparels (Brown and Waddington, 2015). Basically, the agenda of this social
media campaign is to increase the market share in the emerging market of Japan.
Words or messages used in the campaign
After considering the recent content trends like stories of Instagram, interactive videos and
many more, the words or messages in this campaign are selected (Brown, 2009). The
message or words used in this campaign are informative in nature (Benkler, 2006). It is for
informing the target audiences the availability of wide range of fashionable items (Fuchs,
2017). The content is to be used with aid of a unique and convincing visual message for this
campaign to engage the audiences. The type of content or the format of the content is based
on a college level event.
5. Content
Type of Contents
The visual content is used in this social media campaign of Zara. Visual content adds up
advantage and has significant impact on the brand. The visual contents successfully grabs the
attention of audiences and in this case the campaign aims at attracting the audiences towards
the product range of the company through visual contents (Saxton and Wang, 2014) (Benkler,
2006; Brown, 2009; Waddington and Earl, 2012). The usage of visual contents in this
campaign will enable brand recall. The content of this campaign is interactive in nature, it
exhibits conversation between the fashion blogger and college students. The visual content
enhances the brand image by increasing the number of subscribers and viewers on the official
page of Zara.
Reasons behind such creation of contents
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Zara is a renowned brand which has successfully expanded its operations globally and in
order to search for the opportunities in the emerging market of Japan, it is headed towards the
social media campaigning with the usage of visual content (Kemp, 2015). The brand is
mainly targeting the youth of Japan with its wide variety of peppy and colourful collections.
The visual content for social media campaign of Zara is created after having full information
about the target audiences of Japan. In order to target the youth of Japan, a viral content is
required because it is considered as the best way for conveying the message.
How to keep the momentum going
In order to keep the momentum up for the visual content of social media campaign of Zara,
few things should considered (Scott, 2009). Holding the maximum time of the visual content
in single channel because it takes some time to build the interest of the audience. Hence, later
on, the content should expand in other channels. Building network with the influencers
creates an opportunity for furthering the momentum. In this case, the influencer of the fashion
blogger can enhance the number of audience (Bruns et al., 2015). In order to keep the
momentum grow, the brand should focus on the content consumption by engaging the
activities with value (Russell, 2011; Castells, 2013).
6. Editorial Calendar
Other activities and events during this campaign
The editorial calendar provides the schedule of other activities in advance in order to design
the schedule for the content. The editorial calendar of social media of Japan shows the
promotional events and activities by other Japanese companies and competitors of Zara. The
events includes visual contents, tag me events, give away activities and many more (Killian
and McManus, 2015).
Justify the timings
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The editorial calendar stated the traffic of events and activities in the social media platform.
Based on that schedule, the visual content should be played before selected fashion-related
videos on YouTube. The preferred social media platform for the campaign is YouTube for
initial few days and thereafter, other social media platforms (Mount and Martinez, 2014). The
timing for the content is just prior to fashion related videos because the campaign is related
with the fashionable outfits and accessories and lead can be generated from that.
7. User Generated Content
Customer involvement
Visual content in the social media campaign of Zara stimulates the involvement of the
customers due to the effectiveness of the video that aims at creating the brand awareness
(Lopez and Fan, 2009). The customer involvement in this case is high due to the mode of
message because customers can easily recall the brand. The visual contents grab the attention
of the audiences thus making it effective by boosting up the customer engagement and
involvement (Lee and Hong, 2016).
Expectations from the customers
The brand Zara expects from the target audience or customers to accept the items and
accessories of the brand and localize the brand by increasing the usage rates (Scott, 2009).
The market of Japan is considered as an emerging market for fashion industry and Zara
expects to increase the market share in terms of customers.
Where the UGC is used
Customers with good experiences of the products and services of the company often share
their experiences with their peers, hence, the UGC delivers important information without
conducting any activities. In this case, the UGC can be used by letting the target audience
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speak about the product range of Zara, engaging the target audience in the campaigns and
highlighting the post purchase services provided by the company (Bekmamedova and
Shanks, 2014).
8. Social influencer
Usage of social influencer
The social media influencer in the social media campaigning creates the relationship with the
targeted audience because the influencer (whether small or big) can easily reach the targeted
audience with their blogs and videos which a company directly cannot do (Kelly,
Jugenheimer and Sheehan, 2015). The social influencer is considered as an important part of
this campaign by Zara because the influencer can directly influence the followers.
Micro, macro or mega social influencer
Suki Wong, the fashion blogger is a mega social influencer of Tokyo, Japan. She has been
contemplated to be engaged by Zara as social influencer for their social media campaigning
as she has 88.6K followers and 10K fashion related posts on her channel (Baskerville et al.,
2015).
Biography
Suki Wong is a social media influencer and fashion blogger on Instagram. She posts videos
related to fashion and makeup. Her profile has followers exceeding 88,000 and she had
posted more than 9000 videos. She is ranked as a top social media influencer for her fame
and popularity in social media platforms.
9. Crisis management
Any problems related to the campaign
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The social media campaign by Zara in Japan using the visual content might confront a risk of
misjudgement by the audiences. Japan is culturally different from the western countries and
in such case, the Spain based company Zara is conducting social media campaign in order to
attract the target audience and expand their business in the emerging market of Japan (Kumar
et al., 2016). The cultural diversification can create barriers or problems in the social media
campaigning. If such thing happens then, the PR agents of Zara could apologise on social
media platforms.
Preparation of crisis response lines
The company expanding on an international level should be prepared enough for managing
the crisis of social media campaigning. First, Zara should identify the key reasons for such
crisis, thereafter, pause all the social campaigns, followed by acknowledging the issue,
creating a FAQ related to the crisis, and then responding to the social media messages in
order to handle the crisis (Ngai et al., 2015).
Worst that could happen
The worst that can happen is Zara can lose the market share due to the ineffective social
media campaigning. The ineffective social media campaigning can impact the company in
terms of brand awareness and reduced customer engagement and involvement.
10. Measuring success
What does success look like?
The success of the social media campaign of Zara in Japan looks like the increase in the
market share of the company in the industry of retail. The increase in the volume of the
customer base will ensure the success of this campaign. The success of the social media
campaigning of Zara can be measured with the help of some tools like HootSuite,
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