Model Finder #Lookbook Edition
In previous posts, we've talked about which models to cast and how to cast them, with particular attention to who your brand's"audience" is and what your"campaignpurpose" is. After all, the purpose of the shoot is to find new faces for our brand!
Models for e-commerce, lookbooks, etc. are no different :) It depends on the target audience we have in mind for our brand and whether the concept looks good on the model.
What kind of model photos do the hottest malls use these days?
When you go to the shopping platform, you can see the most popular brands and shopping malls at a glance,
Which brands and malls are getting the most attention for 23FW?
Mushinsha Top Ranked Stores
With the Brand Shop menu, Mushinsha allows you to see the best of its nearly 7,500 stores at a glance.
You can also hover over each brand's name to see their featured products and model shots.
For example, thisisneverdat focuses on product photography rather than model photography, while Mardi Mekrdi selects the models that best fit each product and uses their photos as representative photos.
TIP: Hover over brand names that resemble your brand's values to see what kind of models they usually work with and how their shoots turn out.
Brandy Top Ranked Stores
Brandy has tabs for Trends, Brands, Beauty, and Life (which is interesting in itself!), and here's how the malls that are categorized under "Trends" rank
TIP: You can see which vibe stores have been ranking well recently by looking at the tags that appear just below each store's name.
Zigzag Top Ranked Stores
Zigzag can only see the ranking of your store through the app. I see malls that overlap with Brandy's ranking, like Andmore! Slowand and DailyJuice are also always at the top of the list.
It's also interesting that ZigZag introduces rankings based on specific product photos rather than just listing the names of shopping malls, which I think shows the identity of ZigZag.
Most of the top 1-6 products and stores used real-life, candid photos or, like Edmore, conceptual photos of foreign locations.
What's the secret to a successful shopping mall?
Now that we've seen what brands and stores are popular these days, we can learn how they communicate with their customers through model photos and apply it to our own store.
Let's take a look at some representative photos of Andmore's Brandy products, which are ranked at the top of both Brandy and Zigzag.
Andmore is a #trendy #early20s #simplebasics store, so even though the models' faces are obscured by their phones, the photos show how they would feel wearing the clothes in various poses.
On the other hand, if we look at Mardi Mekrdi's top-ranked photos on Moussin, they are more focused on conveying the "image" of each product, using mainly foreign models.
Communicating your brand image through lookbooks
There are other ways to convey your brand image besides product representative photos or photos on detail pages. One of the most common ways to communicate your brand image is through a lookbook, and 29CM is one of the most sensitive shopping platforms out there.
Explore the 29CM Showcase
29CM is more concerned with the 'Showcase' and 'Lookbook' tabs than the brand ranking.
The top of the menu, with "Special-Order," "Showcase," "PT," and "Welove" at the top, sends a message.
For example, if you look at the images that Lowclassic develops through their online showcase, it only takes a few scrolls to get a sense of what they want to convey through their shoots with their models.
There are a total of three images that LowClassic is delivering in this showcase.
PLUFFY+PINK "Dreamy coziness at your fingertips"
CUSHIONY+GRAY "An inflated world with a lingering aftertaste"
GLOSSY+LIME "The light that illuminates your transparently drawn inner self"
Explore the 29CM Lookbook
What other photos in the Lookbook tab communicate your brand values?
For example, the Winter 2023 cover story utilized basketballs as props to convey the outdoor concept, while using a mix of Korean and foreign models to showcase the "diverse styles of people living in urban centers.
In particular, the Archive section, which appears in the middle of the page, gives you a bird's eye view of which models Covernat used for each season and what the shoot looked like. There's a very different vibe to Winter 2023.
What image does your store want to convey through model shoots?
Take a glance at the models' representative photos in Spotlite to find the right model for your shop and imagine what you could do with them.