Marketing professionals talk a lot about lifestyle branding. It is a hot topic just because it’s trendy, but there is something else in play. Lifestyle branding has become a marketing gold mine because of one thing: the internet. You could even make the case that the internet is responsible for making lifestyle branding a thing.
What is lifestyle branding? In a nutshell, it is using your brand to convey a certain lifestyle and the characteristics, philosophies, etc. associated with it. Lifestyle branding attempts to capture cultural attitudes and opinions in order to market to targeted groups of individuals.
It is now vitally important in the digital marketing world because the internet has increased competition among many more brands. To illustrate the point, let us talk about t-shirts. Run a simple Google search on t-shirts and you will discover thousands of companies selling them across the internet landscape.
Distinguishing a Brand
Among those thousands of t-shirt sellers is a New York company known as Plurawl. Like so many of their competitors, they sell everything from t-shirts to hoodies. In order to compete, Plurawl has to distinguish their brand from all the others. That is exactly what they do with their messaging.
Plurawl was founded by an individual frustrated by the fact that he couldn’t be his authentic self in the corporate environment. He set out to change things by starting a t-shirt company built on supporting authenticity in the LatinX community. His vision also became a lifestyle brand.
What sets Plurawl apart is not necessarily the quality of its garments. Other t-shirt sellers offer equal quality. The company’s brand is distinguished by its lifestyle message. That message is one of genuine authenticity among Latinos and Latinas. Plurawl’s business model and vision share a common goal: helping people make authenticity a lifestyle rather than just a buzzword.
Selling the Message
Lifestyle branding is pretty popular throughout the fashion industry. Likewise, if there is one retail sector for which lifestyle branding as a marketing lifeline, it would be clothing and apparel. Why? Because there isn’t a lot of marketing you can apply to garments. You can only talk about quality and styles so much.
Clothing is as basic and fundamental as it gets. So if you have two companies making the same types of garments, how do you distinguish between the two? A pair of jeans is a pair of jeans at the end of the day. Assuming the quality of the denim is equal, along with craftsmanship and design, you have very little to work with for marketing purposes. Therefore, you turn to lifestyle marketing.
Cutting Through the Noise
Thanks to the internet, online retail has become an incredibly crowded space. Not only that, but online retailers are also stealing business from their brick-and-mortar counterparts. Keeping up is all about branding. And in many industries, the most successful branding is lifestyle branding.
The emphasis on lifestyle branding explains why you see so many advertisements that barely speak to the products being sold. Instead, the ads are designed to convey a certain lifestyle that companies want to associate with their brands. If they can convince you to adopt that lifestyle, it becomes easier to convince you to buy their products.
Lifestyle branding did exist before the internet. However, it wasn’t as prevalent back then. Branding was easier when there was less competition for limited audience. But once the internet became a thing itself, competition exploded. That made lifestyle branding even more important.
Chances are you will encounter multiple incidents of lifestyle branding throughout the course of your day. You have the internet to thank for that.
