Athleisure, big data & humanity

The way we dress has always evolved, with a wealth of fashion alternatives being popular among different segments of our societies. In any given situation, among any group of people and in any country, there might be differences when it comes to what is ‘acceptable’ and what is ‘not acceptable’ to wear. Usually both take its own evolving forms within fashion adoption throughout time. In the last decade or so hipsters, hippies, sports fanatics and the ‘mainstream’ (respectively) can unite in adopting the rise of athleisure and activewear as these are becoming ever more ubiquitous in the gigantic world of fashion.

The increasing ubiquity of these terms does mean that target audience and market segment lines in fashion/apparel are becoming ever more blurred. Sports Apparel evolved into a mass-market of its own when television led to athletes reaching stardom status. That said, the ocean of digital social interactions is sweeping current trends away and the true capturing of sales in this market has and will likely increase in complexity.

From blurred lines…

These lines have blurred for a multitude of reasons. Beside numerous direct examples, such as Armani sweatpants competing with those of Nike, sales are increasingly scattered with hoodies, sweatpants and sneaker startups popping up across the globe. Price-wise a keen fashionista might have to decide between saving up for collector’s Adidas at €4.5k, a pair of Amina Muaddi‘s or some vegan sneakers from Veja. 

Interestingly this growing market and the rise in revenues of Nike, having doubled its earnings since 2008 to €30.5bn in 2019, and others such as Lululemon has coincided with the rise of the smartphone.

Instagram influencers and the overall digital revolution added a whole new social layer to perceptions on fashion. The way we dress as well as accept how others dress doesn’t change overnight nor does it remain the same throughout our lives yet it seems smartphone adoption has helped accelerate the adoption of new trends. Where sneakers can be worn underneath suits or fancy dresses, and trainers are accepted as a fashion statement. 

As the world became vastly connected so too increased consumer demand for personalised experiences, and the world of fashion is no exception; competing for loyal brand followers in a world full of choice is a complex task. In a highly scattered competitive landscape the more dominant scaleups such as UK based Gymshark fully leverage the power of social to allow for their brand followers to feel appreciated. Whereas Nike, being a sports apparel behemoth, hires an army of data scientists* to increase efficiency across all its sales channels (including social).

This rising consumer demand for personalised experiences can be trickier for large industry incumbents yet there are these attempts to counter disruptors and continue growth. Even so, a large piece of hidden and/or new market segments might go unnoticed in the process of efficiently leveraging big data, given a ‘emotional’ approach is not fully incorporated.

....to emotional connections

Executives across the board have come to agree that it is knowing the emotional triggers driving brand choice that will lead to discovering swathes of (marketing) white space. As Tricia Wang highlights in her talk ‘The human insights missing from big data’, if you would have been an executive at Nokia in 2008 you would have taken a different approach to 'emotional' data at that time. Having taken into account the human aspect of data might have prevented going from €72bn annual revenue to €5.4bn (!) in just 6 years (2008–2014).

Beyond big data and revenue growth capturing the emotional context surrounding the buying of any given brand over another is really important. Using internal or 'standard' data will tell you how much your brand sold, your market share, where demand has increased and a wealth of other things. Yet if bench-marked against what potentially could be referred to as ‘emotional data’, for example the instant mental connections made in our brains when considering a brand and the developing rather than developed trends, the true underlying nature of purchase decisions and future emotional connections could be uncovered.

Garments and footwear are really close to us, literally on our skin, this means the emotional connection to apparel brands is even more intense. Hence, Gymshark (closeness) and Veja (conscious consumption) might well be the very brands that eat large chunks of Nike and Adidas revenue in the next decade.

Finally, the past, present and that what comes next

We all ask ourselves what will come next as well as review as to what has happened, think of the end of year reviews and next year predictions so widespread during the end of any year (check out this review for 2019 by Ipsos ‘A world of Research’, great contextual and ‘humanity’ driven data).

Being sure when making decisions in a business and marketing context is crucial. The big data debate has increased the value of data driven decisions and actionable insights yet could become more and more distanced from our actual emotional connections to brands. In turn this could lead to the overlooking of a developing trend crucial to the survival of your business (think Nokia):

• Nike might want to focus itself increasingly on the emotional triggers for buying their sneakers over that of a local competitor in any given cultural/country context.
• While Under Armour might already be asking itself where to carve out white space to counter its slowing revenue growth rate, e.g. launching 'recovery sleepwear'.
• Asics will likely be keen on replicating the setting of the trend such as wearing sneakers under suits;
• With ‘younger’ companies such as Gymshark will continue to eat away at the sales that could have been captured as the competitive landscape continues to grow

Preventing quantification biases to take over from 'human' data and context, we need to uncover the emotional triggers of people that are driving the evolvement of trends. We are all intelligent human beings, yet we all have our own focus areas and biases. Although important, our own (expert) views could get in the way of truly impactful decisions based on the actual broader human context. To grow your brands in a truly sustainable way let your decisions be fuelled by both factual and emotional numbers.

Do get in touch to work with the lovely team at Ipsos! My lovely colleague Patricia Verhoelst helped me in writing this article.

We have amazing tools: from the highly affordable DIY research platform Ipsos.Digital (available in 60 countries by the end of 2020) to a wealth of bespoke research solutions allowing you to dive into the true emotional connections with existing and new brand lovers ??

As always please do comment, like and/or get in touch with me to discuss anything related to branding, strategy, marketing, purpose driven growth, sustainability, tech, startups. etc.

*=Nike recently acquired Celect, which performs predictive analysis of consumer demand on big data using machine learning algorithms. It is the second such large data science company acquisition after which it announced an e-commerce pivot to stop selling on Amazon. It shows Nike is working hard to ingrain big data and AI in its sales processes to wholly focus in its direct-to-consumer (D2C) channels, where 30% of revenue now originates.