Episode 7: Learn a Simple Framework for Teaching Fashion Marketing

0:00 Hey, EdVenturous Educators. Have you ever found yourself suddenly having to teach a class that you know nothing about? It happens far too often to too many teachers out there. This is what led me to this topic today. So I want you to listen in, as I talk about a framework for teaching fashion marketing that engages your students and introduces them to marketing concepts, while providing rigorous activities and projects that immerse them into the fashion industry. So if you're a business teacher, a family and consumer sciences teacher, and even just a new marketing teacher, listen in and glean some information that you may be able to use in your classroom.

0:54 You're listening to marketing EdVenture, the hub for business, fashion, marketing, and other CTE educators who integrate marketing into the learning experience. I'm your host, Jacque' Walker. Each week, I'll cover marketing, education concepts, strategies, tips, trends, frameworks, and other information to equip you to connect your classroom to digital natives while cultivating an engaged learning environment. So come on into the room, where your favorite beverage snacks and even your cell phone are all welcome.

1:33 Welcome to episode seven, where we talk about who is teaching fashion marketing. So who is teaching fashion marketing? In my 14 years in the classroom, as a fashion marketing teacher, I'd only known a Marketing Education certified educators who were teaching fashion marketing. Here recently, I've found that fashion design teachers have this prep added as like a partner course to their fashion design program. Also, there are business teachers who are finding themselves having to expand their depth of knowledge, as they're introduced to the idea of adding fashion marketing to their elective offerings. Now, these could be by choice, or being voluntold. As they say, Well, what teachers who are not marketing teachers need to know about fashion marketing. From my perspective, when I think about business teachers, it seems as though their focus is on finance, accounting, law, human resources, and a host of other areas that may fall under operations. Not necessarily marketing. And when I think about family and consumer sciences, teachers, I think about them covering a wide range of subjects dealing with family life, normally, their fashion content, it's more design focused, not necessarily marketing. So with these in mind, these teachers are not marketing focused. And when you think about a fashion marketing class that falls under the fashion or the marketing curriculum, the marketing pathway, the marketing endorsements, this class, that is fashion marketing should be marketing focused.

4:01 So let's define marketing. The American Marketing Association defines it as the activities set of institutions and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and at large society or society at large. Very simply put, it's all of the activities involved in getting the product or the service from the producer to the consumer. That's the definition I used with my students to get them to understand it is all the activities. Activities involve a wide range of things, but it's every activity that is done to move the product or the service from the producer. The person who creates it to the consumer, the person who uses it commonly people think of advertising is marketing. Advertising is a large component of marketing. However, there are other components of marketing such as distribution, selling, even financing is a part of marketing. There's so many other components that marketing consistent. But what I want to look at is, if we apply fashion to what marketing means. It means that fashion marketing, in the fashion industry, involves all of the activities to move goods, products, services, and all things from the producer, the developer, the designer, to the consumer, who is the end user. This applies to every level of the industry from primary to retail, and we'll talk about that a little later. Well, let's look at this from a fashion marketing course. perspective. Because I know what I've said, up to this point, it's pretty broad, because it's just a simple statement, all activities to move products and services from a producer to a consumer. That's pretty broad. So how do we break that down.

6:30 Well, my goal here is to provide an overview of what fashion marketing is, and give us scope of what a semester of curriculum can look like. If you are only teaching one prep of fashion marketing, that means you don't have any other fashion marketing courses, you don't have a program with multiple levels of fashion marketing, as I did, I had a four year fashion marketing program. It started with entrepreneurship, it went into the introduction of fashion marketing, then it went into fashion advertising. And then we focused on the principles of marketing. Then we talked about fashion trends, we did color theory. And then we ended the four year program with visual merchandising. That's a lot. But this is focusing on someone who's teaching one prep of fashion marketing, and not a multi level program. I want to lay out for you how your semester could look, because most of you are teaching one semester of fashion marketing.

7:39 Alright, let's say that you have a standard 18 week semester, we're going to take that semester, we're going to break it down into three parts. And I like to start the first part, the first six weeks off with just fashion. Why do I start off with fashion? Well, number one, most of the people who are in that class will be there because they have a great interest in fashion. They don't necessarily want to learn about marketing. They're there for fashion. And so you want to capture their attention, get them engaged.

8:19 So let's start the first six weeks off, focused on fashion. That can look like your first week, being you know, just finding out what their fashion interests are. Finding out what they even think fashion is. And then starting to introduce some things, some concepts about fashion. Now, for each semester, the fall semester in the spring semester, there is an event that happens right at the beginning of each of those semesters. In the fall in September, you have the big four fashion weeks that are kicking off starting in New York. And so you have basically two months of fashion shows. And it will be great to start them off by looking at those fashion weeks. So that's why you want to start off the first week, just getting an idea of what they think fashion is, what things in fashion are important to them, learning their fashion IQ, things of that nature.

9:36 Then you want to move into discussing principles in elements of design. Now, I know I'm saying design here, but we're talking about fashion marketing. That's okay. Because in any industry that you're marketing in, you need to understand what it is you're marketing in for any fashion market. To really understand the fashion industry and what their marketing, they have to understand the very basic principles and elements of design, that's very key. And they play into your advertising and things of that nature, because you're talking about color, line, you know, visuals, things of that nature. So they need to know those. So you want to talk about that. And also, because when they're viewing those fashion shows, they need to understand those elements. And those principles. Now, I know we're talking about fashion here, but I want those of you who teach sports and entertainment, marketing, hospitality, or any other type of marketing that has a focused content, you can do the same thing. Start your first six weeks off, but just focusing on that area sports and entertainment, hospitality. I mean, there's some finance marketing, and there's some automotive marketing and all those other things that are covered in our DECA curriculum and content. So you can start off with just focusing on those, and then get into what I'm going to talk about next.

11:11 But just staying on the track for the first six weeks, once you've talked about your principles and elements of design, you can go into talking about the four levels of the fashion industry. And so  level of fashion, we're talking about fibers, and you have naturalthose four levels are your primary level, your secondary level, your retail level, and then your auxiliary level. And at the primary level, you have the basic goods, things that are needed to make other things. It's not your ultimate, and material, it's the things that go into making the materials. So let's talk about fabrics, fabric is not your primary resource. It requires fibers to make fabric. So your primary resource at the primary fibers in manufactured fibers. So at that primary level, those are things that are being produced. So they can go ahead and create other goods that will be used to make the final products, you have your secondary level, which is where manufacturing takes place. So you have your manufacturing companies, you have your designers at this level. They're the ones who are using those goods from the primary level. Wholesale takes place at this level also. Those are the people who are buying from the manufacturers to then turn around and sell at the retail level. The 4th level is auxiliary. This is where ad agencies, magazines, fashion forecasters are. They support all of the other levels. So I'm not going to go into detail about those different levels, I just want you to understand that this is what you can focus on in the fashion section of your content. When you're teaching, you want your students to understand the four different levels.

13:09 And as a finale for the fashion section, you want to talk about the fashion cycle, they need to understand how fashion comes in and out of seasons and cycles. And understand the fashion theories. There are three different theories, there are five different areas of your fashion cycle. Those are the things that you want to teach because those are the basis for fashion and how it evolves. So that wraps up the fashion section. You've been teaching that for six weeks, they have a good foundation of fashion, they know a lot more than they did before because they know fashion is more than what pops up on their social media or what's out in the entertainment world they really have a true concept of fashion. Then you want to move into marketing basics.

14:03 So your marketing basics are going to include things like the marketing mix, the functions of marketing, your target market, understanding what that is and in how to create a target market profile, utility, competition, promotional mix, so they need to understand all of those basic concepts of marketing so that they would now know okay, how do I take this fashion and market it to a particular segment of people? So you'll cover six weeks of that and they won't and they won't necessarily be bored with that because they have their fashion foundation that they can take into now how do I market this? There? They'll be excited about talking about marketing at that point. Now, once you've gone over those concepts of marketing, and in each one of these sections, you're doing projects, I mean, of course, you're doing activities, you're taking quizzes, you're doing tests, you know, testing their knowledge, you may have a project or two that you're doing in the fashion area project or two that you're doing in the marketing area.

15:24 I like to introduce a career project at the very beginning of the year, that is worked on throughout the whole semester, so that they can look at careers at each one of these areas, in the various levels like of the industry, primary, secondary, retail, auxiliary, they can look at careers in marketing, they can look at all this for all the careers that are just fashion oriented. So then, you know, have an ongoing semester-long career project that they can work on little pieces of at a time and have a final project. And I like to do that just as a little bonus thing. All right. So we're going to move away from just looking at marketing. We're in our 13th week of the semester, because we've done six weeks of fashion, we've done six weeks of marketing basics, now we're going to go into the final six weeks of the semester. And that's going to be a capstone project.

16:32 Now, the capstone project is a project that encompasses all of the concepts that they've learned over the semester, for fashion, and for marketing. Now I have a project that I love to use, and it was the fashion promotion plan. So you take that project, and you break it into parts over the next six weeks. So you're teaching a part of that concept in the project. And then the students are working, you're evaluating, and then you teach the next concept, the students work on that part you're evaluating, they may be doing some presentations of their material to get feedback, and improve. And remember, they're working on this project over a six week period of time, up to six weeks, sometimes teachers may take that and break it into maybe like a three week project, it just varies, you can do three to six weeks. But the idea is to just take that project, having the concepts that you learned from fashion and for marketing, and then some other concepts that you're going to be teaching within that period of time, and breaking it into pieces, letting the students work on the project in phases. And then by the end of the six weeks, you have a complete project. Now this project, I generally had that count as like four grades, at least, the project itself is a great project. The presentation of the project was an assessment. The visual aids that you create with the project was also a project grade, or it could have been an assessment just depending on how you want to break that up. There's an executive summary that's at the beginning of the project that you don't do until the end of the project, because you can't do an executive summary until you complete the whole project, right? That I would normally count as a test grade. And of course, we're at the end of the semester. So you can take the assessment of the oral presentation and make it an exam grade, the final semester exam grade or you can take the project and make it a final assessment or final semester exam grade. So that last six weeks is your capstone project. Now I know that I just gave you a high level of how you could actually break your fashion marketing course up over one semester. If you want more details, I do have a product called The Ultimate Fashion Marketing Class Bundle.

19:23 Hey EdVenturous Educator, I just want to take a quick break to ask, "Is this your first time teaching fashion marketing? Or do you need a boost in your curriculum?" Well look no further. I have the Ultimate Fashion Marketing Class Bundle packed with 4 vibrant presentations, fun and engaging activities, quizzes, and 4 major projects for an immersive semester of fashion exploration. And it comes with the pacing guide for an 18 week semester. Additionally, each assignment has detailed student instructions and suggested pacing times, so that you can tailor the time frame to fit your teaching schedule. For more information about this must have bundle, go to marketingedventure.com and search, Ultimate Fashion Marketing Class Bundle, or simply click the link in the show notes.

20:19 So there you have it. You definitely can teach fashion marketing, whether you're a fashion marketing educator or your business or Family and Consumer Sciences. But what I really want to relay here is that we don't want to water down fashion marketing, because we may not know much about marketing if we didn't get our certification and marketing. You really want to focus on marketing, in the fashion industry, and here is a great bundle that can help you and incorporate that into your learning environment. And as a bonus to you because you listened to this podcast, and you listened all the way to the end of this episode, I'm offering a 10% discount to all who want to purchase the ultimate fashion marketing class bundle on my website at marketingedventure.com . You can see the link in my show notes to access that product and receive the discount. I hope you have a wonderfully blessed day.

21:38 Thanks for listening to Marketing EdVenture. Remember to subscribe, rate, review and share this episode with someone you think would benefit from the information shared here today. If you have any questions or want to connect with me, find me on Instagram at marketing adventure. All links and resources discussed in this episode can be found in the show notes at marketingedventure.com.