Heading Back to School in Style with PAIGE

[Originally published on the Dash Hudson blog.]

One of the biggest seasons in the fashion world is fall. It’s the time of year when clothing, footwear, lifestyle, and accessory brands all gear up for cooler weather, back-to-school, and most importantly, fashion week. When shopping for your next fall #OOTD, chic and stylish, but also accessible and relatable pieces are all top of mind. And what’s more classic than a good pair of denim?

There’s no one better to ask than the team at LA’s best, PAIGE. We sat down with Carson Olivares, digital content manager at PAIGE to break down the brand’s data-backed Instagram strategy for fall 2019, and how Carson and her team leverage the visual channel to bring their seasonal campaigns to life. Keep reading to learn all about how PAIGE is killing it on the ‘Gram.

1) Why is Instagram an important channel to PAIGE’s marketing strategy?

For fashion brands, Instagram serves as the perfect channel to give your audience a dose of inspiration for their personal style, all while building an authentic connection between your online community and your brand. We use the channel to convey our brand voice and perspective, and also showcase our community. It’s so cool to see how many people take our pieces and style them in their own way.

2) With fall being such a crucial time of year in the fashion industry, what campaigns will PAIGE be rolling out this season?

Yes, fall is huge for us! Our biggest collections product-wise come in the fall and spring. With fall fashion week, we invest in a lot of influencer campaigns. We kicked off our women’s shoe line last year and have new boot styles coming this season. Obviously, denim and ankle boots go hand-in-hand — especially this time of year — so from a product standpoint this is a key season for us.

3) Tell us about your social strategy this fall?

Content creation is a big priority in the fall. We have our main lookbook shoot which focuses on all of our brand imagery that you see in ads and in the press. Our e-commerce dedicated shoots highlight the trends from the season that will go across our social and website. Lastly, we have a shoot specific to our social. This includes a lot of street-style imagery. PAIGE is all about effortless, on-the-go style. #LiveInIt is our hashtag and is meant to showcase that you can live in your PAIGE, from day to night. We create content that is meant to showcase how to style our pieces in an accessible and relatable way.

Influencer marketing is another focus this fall. My team oversees influencer partnerships and we definitely double down on our influencer strategy this time of year. We have an Instagram Stories series right now, #myPAIGE24, which is meant to speak to 24 hours in your PAIGE, since it’s all about how you #LiveInIt. We tap different friends of the brand to show how they live in their PAIGE. One of our influencers will take our audience through a typical day at NYFW. We’ll also leverage our team to showcase a day in the life working at PAIGE.

4) Denim is an all-year-round staple in any woman or man’s wardrobe. How do you incorporate that into your IG feed?

This is an evolving process right now. We started as a women’s brand, so the majority of our content is geared towards our female audience on Instagram. However, we are growing our male audience more and more each day. It is becoming a niche, engaged audience that has helped our men’s products become cult favorites. We see our male customers coming back to buy their favorites, season after season.

As we continue to grow our men’s lines, we are creating more programs to target and engage with our male community, such as dedicated IG stories and influencer partnerships. For our male influencers, we look at our partnerships through a different lens compared to our traditional female influencers. We like to think of our guy as someone that is interested in sports, culture, food, and travel, not necessarily the typical men’s fashion influencer. We’ve had some amazing athletes in the baseball and basketball sphere takeover some of our IG Stories and it’s been working great.

5) The PAIGE brand stays true to its signature style throughout all of its product lines. How do you and your team use this strategy to speak to the PAIGE brand on social?

First and foremost, we are a Los Angeles born brand and like to think of ourselves as California-inspired through and through. We love to embrace that effortless style that you can take anywhere! It’s easy, you can wear it on the go, and day-to-night.

To align with our Cali vibes, our content style is bright, pretty, clean, friendly, and approachable. We never take ourselves too seriously and like to be relatable to our audience. I think you can see that through our social content — it’s not too polished or manicured. We still want to have beautiful imagery, but like to make it accessible to our average girl.

6) We have to ask… What’s your favorite Dash Hudson tool?

Scheduler, Boards and Relationship IQ are so valuable to us. The analytics in Dash Hudson are so important, but we especially use these features on a day-to-day basis. We leverage the Boards feature to inform our photoshoots. We’re able to understand which content categories will perform with our audience. If we are testing out something new, we can leverage Boards to see how it’s doing in real-time. This is shared across our design and production teams so we always create content that is backed by analytics and real-time data.

Relationship IQ is important to us because as we continue to work with more and more influencers and build bigger events, we need to be able to understand how they perform. We recently just had a paid summer house event, held in Malibu — we hosted activations throughout the day with various influencers. RIQ is so amazing because we can track everything that is happening and measure ROI to share with our team and make the case that we should be investing in more of these types of events.

Speed Round 🏃‍♀️

7) What is your favorite wash and style of denim?

We have this new style that is coming out this fall that we are all obsessed with. It’s called “The Cindy”, which is a new style that is inspired by that 90’s supermodel fit. It’s a high-rise straight leg that has a little crop to it. The wash is a light blue and it’s so flattering and easy to wear with a graphic tee and any shoe!

8) Any tips for finding the perfect fit?

I tend to push out my washes with jeans — and I think that’s the secret! It’s not necessary to wash them after every wear, a good pair of jeans gets better the more you wear them and throughout the years. It’s different depending on what type of denim it is, but I think figuring out what wash cycle works for your denim is the best!

9) Go-to outfit to wear with a pair of jeans?

I am such a jeans and a t-shirt girl, through and through! I love a good pair of jeans that you feel great in, with a white or graphic tee. Always my go-to.

10) We are a Canadian born company. So I have to ask, “The Canadian Tuxedo” of denim on denim. Yay or Nay?

I’m always here for a cool 90’s throwback moment! I think there are fresh ways to wear it that don’t feel dated. It’s important to style it right and accessorize to keep it modern.

That’s a wrap! Make sure to plan your next 🔥 fit with PAIGE and follow the brand on Instagram here. Don’t forget to tag #LiveInIt to be featured.

Header image: @paige

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