Welcome to the Glossy+ Research Briefing, your weekly curation of fashion and beauty research insights. Glossy+ members have full access to the research below.
In this edition, we share focal points from Glossy’s recent case study on how brands and influencers are diving into YouTube Shorts to expand their reach and the future of digital fashion shows through the metaverse.
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With just a few minutes of Shorts content, influencers reached large audiences
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With the recent rise in popularity of short-form videos, many brands and creators are starting to experiment with YouTube Shorts to expand their reach across social media. According to Statista, as of July 2023, YouTube Shorts had reached over 2 billion monthly logged-in users.
Short-form video itself is the most popular marketing trend in 2023, with one third of marketers using it, according to a study by The HubSpot Blog. The study found that 21% of marketers planned to use short-form video for the first time in 2023 — the highest of any trend — and 90% of marketers actively using short-form video planned to increase or maintain their investment in the coming year.
In this recently released case study, Glossy+ Research analyzes how 11 key influencers are using Shorts to reach new audiences and what types of Shorts video styles create the most buzz for marketers looking to generate original sponsorship content.
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Across all videos posted by the 11 influencers in this study, the group received an average of 128,786 views per Shorts video — receiving individually, on average, thousands to hundreds of thousands of views per Shorts video. Jeffree Star (@jeffreestar on YouTube, 15.9 million subscribers) has the largest channel based on subscribers among those included. Star posted two Shorts videos to his YouTube channel, which amassed over 1.4 million views in combination, and around 718,000 views per video. With just two minutes of content, Star was able to reach millions of viewers and connect with his audience
Even Rose Siard (@roseandben on YouTube, 83,000 subscribers), the smallest channel based on subscribers among the cohort, had an average of 3,433 views across the three Shorts videos she uploaded last year. Siard was one of the later entrants into Shorts content, posting her first video in early October 2022.
Glossy+ Research also looked at the style of Shorts videos influencers most commonly posted and discovered a third (33%) of the 2022 Shorts content included in this study were tutorial videos depicting beauty or fashion tips, tricks and tidbits of information. Reviews were the second-most popular type of content, with 21% of Shorts videos sharing creators’ opinions on product efficacy.
YouTube has been historically used by viewers inordinately for discovering informative videos and learning new skills. This trend carries on among short-form content on the platform, where viewers prefer educational content in which some knowledge or skill is gained from watching the video. Among the Shorts analyzed in this study, routine and tutorial-style videos garnered the most attention and engagement. On average, routine videos received over 428,000 views per video. Tutorials were a close second, averaging over 385,000 views per video. However, more viewers engaged with tutorials than routine videos through likes. On average, tutorials earned about 21,000 likes versus approximately 16,000 likes for routine videos.
As the popularity of YouTube Shorts grows, brands are starting to experiment with the platform more. Some brands are looking to develop and invest in original and dedicated Shorts videos to take advantage of this surge in user consumption rather than repurposing existing content from TikTok and Instagram. Ipsy, for example, is assessing how to develop and invest in original and dedicated Shorts content.
To keep up with the demand for marketing content on each platform, some brands are turning to AI. Fragrance brand Henry Rose tapped Constellation, an automated social content software company, to help generate short-form content for the brand. “Creative fatigue seems to be happening quicker and quicker, so brands have to fill that pipeline with creative assets,” said Debi Theis, president at Henry Rose.
Constellation can use parameters set by a brand and integrations with data providers to create custom content variations that reach specific audience types and sizes. These videos are then directly published to Meta and TikTok platforms.
Key findings:
- Across all Shorts videos posted by the 11 influencers in this study, the group received an average of 128,786 views per Shorts video — receiving individually, on average, thousands to hundreds of thousands of views per Shorts video.
- The style of Shorts videos influencers most commonly posted were tutorial videos (33%) depicting beauty or fashion tips, tricks and tidbits of information. Reviews were the second-most popular type of content, with 21% of Shorts videos sharing creators’ opinions on product efficacy.
- Among the Shorts analyzed in this study, “infotainment” style videos garnered the most attention and engagement. On average, routine videos received over 428,000 views per video. Tutorials were a close second, averaging over 385,000 views per video.
More fashion brands bet on web3 as they incorporate digital fashion into shows, loyalty programs
Diesel launched its first digital fashion collection for Meta avatars ahead of its Milan show, yesterday. The digital fashion collection, featuring 10 digital fashion pieces, stems from Diesel’s new partnership with digital fashion retailer DressX. The pieces are being sold in the Meta Avatars Store on Instagram, Facebook, Messenger and Quest VR. Diesel also released 300 digital fashion collectibles that provided access to Diesel’s Milan show, facilitating first access to new products and granting access to Diesel’s web3 community.
“The future of fashion is beyond fashion and beyond physical clothing,” said Stefano Rosso, CEO of web3 brand BVX and board member of OTB Group, Diesel’s parent company. “It’s all about brand presence and the look of people within virtual and augmented reality environments. Digital fashion is a great opportunity for the future development of brands, in terms of creativity, and in terms of revenue stream potential, as well.”
Other fashion brands are offering innovative loyalty programs to web3 communities to increase engagement and lifetime value of customers. Within the last month, digital product-based loyalty programs that have come to market include Lacoste’s UNDW3 NFT card, Dior’s B33 sneakers and Louis Vuitton’s Via Trunks.
Fashion brands like Diesel are betting on web3 more than most. Few brands and retailers responding to Glossy and Modern Retail’s Q1 2023 survey believed that the technologies generally described as “web3” will have an impact on their business this year. When asked to select whether the metaverse, virtual reality (VR), NFTs, blockchain, cryptocurrency or “other,” will have the biggest impact on their business, 73% of respondents chose a seventh option: “none of the above.” Significantly higher than that of those surveyed last year — 54% selected “none of the above.”
Among those that do see web3 having an impact, the metaverse is the biggest technology they’re still betting on, with 12% expecting it to have an impact on business in the coming year. But that buzz does seem to be in decline: In last year’s survey, 16% had selected the metaverse.
Brands’ interest in VR — another big component of Meta’s bet on the metaverse — is also on the decline. Only 8% said it will impact their business in the coming year, down from 12% who made the prediction in 2022. In Glossy+ Research’s emerging tech series, we uncovered how marketers are actually using augmented reality (AR) and VR, and how they plan to incorporate the technologies in the future.
More marketers are using AR for practical applications like brand engagement and sales, while they are only experimenting cautiously with VR. About a third (38%) of marketer respondents said they are using AR in 2022, up 15 percentage points from 23% in 2017. The increase in marketer use of AR can likely be at least partially attributed to the fact that AR — which layers digital elements over a real-world view — readily lends itself to marketer applications.
AR technology has also become more widely accessible to many shoppers via their smartphone cameras, which can connect to apps and facilitate AR experiences. Consumer-friendly try-on options, paired with better technology distribution, make AR an increasingly appealing technology for marketers. The top reason for employing AR in 2022 for marketers was for social media/camera filters, with 74% of marketer respondents who use the technology saying they use AR for those reasons. That indicates that AR is still used primarily as a marketing tool to create buzz rather than to push consumers to purchase or provide utility.
Key findings:
- Few brands and retailers believe that the technologies generally described as “web3” will have an impact on their business this year. When asked to select whether the metaverse, VR, NFTs, blockchain, cryptocurrency or “other,” will have the biggest impact on their business, 73% of respondents chose a seventh option: “none of the above.” That’s significantly higher than last year when 54% selected “none of the above.”
- Fashion brands like Diesel, Lacoste, Dior and Louis Vuitton are betting on web3 communities and digital fashion for the future. Among those that do see web3 having an impact, the metaverse is the biggest technology they’re still betting on, with 12% expecting it to have an impact on business in the coming year.
READ MORE ON HOW MARKETERS ARE USING AR AND VR
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