A Mod­Cloth sur­vey sug­gests that the major­i­ty of women believe there’s a dis­con­nect between the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of mod­els in the indus­try and what’s “real.” Fur­ther­more, a large major­i­ty of women state that they would pre­fer to buy from a brand that por­tray real­is­tic female images. Do fash­ion brands need to seri­ous­ly re-eval­u­ate their adver­tis­ing mes­sages and visu­als to real­ly con­nect with con­sumers?

U.S. fash­ion retail­er Mod­Cloth sur­veyed 1,500 women for their “Truth in Fash­ion” report, reveal­ing some fas­ci­nat­ing insights on the effects of fash­ion adver­tis­ing on the mood and shop­ping behav­iors of women.

The study found that 66 per­cent of women said they were more like­ly to buy from a brand that used mod­els of vary­ing sizes in their mar­ket­ing and adver­tis­ing. The gen­er­al frus­tra­tion lev­el at the way women were pre­sent­ed by fash­ion brands was high, with only 13 of women agree­ing with the state­ment that “real women were accu­rate­ly por­trayed in the fash­ion indus­try.”

Key Fashion Industry Findings

Across a range of con­sid­er­a­tions, Mod­Cloth’s “Fash­ion Truth” Report revealed a clear dis­sat­is­fac­tion with the way women were being por­trayed by the fash­ion indus­try at large.

• 71 per­cent of women agree that there needs to be more diver­si­ty among fash­ion mod­els.
• 47 per­cent said they feel exclud­ed by the fash­ion indus­try.
• A even greater pro­por­tion, 65 per­cent of plus size women said they felt exclud­ed.
• 62 per­cent think that the fash­ion indus­try is harm­ful to women’s body image.
• 39 per­cent of all women stat­ed they couldn’t relate to fash­ion adver­tis­ing.
• 52 per­cent of plus-size women stat­ed they couldn’t relate to fash­ion adver­tis­ing.
• 58 per­cent are more like­ly to buy from brands that use mod­els of vary­ing eth­nic­i­ties.
• 52 per­cent are more like­ly to buy from brands that use mod­els of vary­ing heights.
• 73 per­cent of women think that the cur­rent amount of retouch­ing used in the fash­ion indus­try is mis­lead­ing.

How Does This Affect Buying Preferences?

When asked about how these fac­tors affect­ed their buy­ing pref­er­ences, there was a pow­er­ful trend: two-thirds of women told Mod­Cloth that they were more like­ly to buy from a com­pa­ny that addressed these con­sid­er­a­tions:

• 66 per­cent of women stat­ed that they were more like­ly to buy from brands that use mod­els of vary­ing sizes.
• 67 agreed they would buy more from a com­pa­ny that uses lim­it­ed amounts of retouch­ing and Pho­to­shop­ping.

#FashionTruth

In an open let­ter to the fash­ion indus­try, Susan Gregg Koger, ModCloth’s co-founder and CEO, put out a call to action to the fash­ion indus­try to “start using its pow­er for good”. In the let­ter, Koger spoke of her deep dis­ap­point­ment with how fash­ion indus­try push­es con­sumers to con­firm to a stan­dard of beau­ty built on “high­ly altered and often unre­al­is­tic images”:

“Imag­ine a world where flip­ping through a fash­ion mag­a­zine is an empow­er­ing and life-affirm­ing expe­ri­ence! That’s a world I want to live in, and that would be an indus­try I’d be proud to be a part of.”

And indeed, these beliefs seem to be the pil­lars on which MoCloth has built it’s PR and mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Recent­ly Mod­Cloth became the first fash­ion retail­er to sign The Brave Girls Alliance “Truth in Adver­tis­ing Heroes Pledge,” an anti-air­brush­ing peti­tion encour­ag­ing par­tic­i­pants to “do [their] best not to change the shape, size, pro­por­tion, col­or and/or remove/enhance the phys­i­cal fea­tures, of the peo­ple in our ads in post-pro­duc­tion.”

On the back of the sur­vey find­ings, Mod­cloth launched the #Fash­ion­Truth cam­paign, which ampli­fies their mes­sage cham­pi­oning the use of real­is­tic female images in the fash­ion indus­try. Part of #Fash­ion­Truth also includes a cast­ing call open to all women, which enables any cus­tomer who tweets or Insta­grams a self­ie to become a face of Mod­Cloths future mar­ket­ing cam­paigns.

Alto­geth­er it makes a pow­er­ful mes­sage about Mod­Cloth’s com­mit­ment to depict­ing women as their true and real­is­tic selves.

Moving From ‘Corporate-Centric’ To ‘Consumer-Centric’ Content

Mod­Cloth have made a bold state­ment of intent about their stance on the media rep­re­sen­ta­tion, on the back of some pow­er­ful find­ings revealed in their Fash­ion Truth sur­vey. The depic­tion of female imagery in the fash­ion indus­try has been a top­ic of debate for some years now, and Mod­Cloth’s recent activ­i­ty is notable for its strik­ing sim­plic­i­ty.

Mod­Cloth’s #Fash­ion­Truth cam­paign is a great exam­ple of a brand seek­ing out the opin­ions of, and real­ly lis­ten­ing to, their con­sumers. By empha­sis­ing with their con­cerns, Mod­Cloth have also found a pos­i­tive avenue with which to engage their con­sumers on social media. In the fash­ion indus­try par­tic­u­lar­ly, it marks a shift from brands pro­duc­ing ‘cor­po­rate-cen­tric’ con­tent, to much more ‘con­sumer-cen­tric’ mes­sag­ing.

Accord­ing to Ann Han­d­ley, Chief Con­tent Offi­cer, Mar­ket­ing­Profs:

“Too many com­pa­nies are cre­at­ing cor­po­rate-cen­tric con­tent instead of cus­tomer-cen­tric con­tent. What’s the dif­fer­ence? The for­mer is about you, while the lat­ter is about what you do for your cus­tomer – a sub­tle yet crit­i­cal shift. A good lens through which to view any con­tent you pro­duce is this: Will your cus­tomer thank you for this con­tent? In effect, will your cus­tomer thank you for mar­ket­ing to them?”