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How Chelsea Hansford made Simon Miller a modern luxury label

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Scrolling through Instagram these days seems like walking through a maze of sponsored content and posts you don’t necessarily care about.

Being a brand, especially a fashion brand, that can stand out in this tsunami of content can be tough. But that’s where California-based luxury womenswear brand Simon Miller shines the most. From colorful and modern ready-to-wear to swimwear and accessories, the brand has a bold yet stylish aesthetic that’s hard to miss.

The brand got its start as a denim label in 2008, but when creative director and CEO Chelsea Hansford came on board in 2013, it bid adieu to both denim and menswear to become the luxury womenswear-only brand it is today.

“I always wanted to build a lifestyle brand,” Hansford told Retail Brew. “That was my main mission, and I have a very distinct aesthetic that I think crosses over way more than just clothes. A lot of my inspiration comes from home and interior and [is] less fine art but more architecture, furniture, sculptures, things like that.”

A lot has factored into Simon Miller’s success. Over the years, the retailer has shifted from a wholesale-only strategy to a mix of 60% wholesale and 40% DTC. While it maintains a presence in stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom, it is also experimenting with pop-ups across LA and New York.

And while Hansford realizes it’s a challenge to keep the brand going, faced with the ever-shifting economic environment, she has a few strategies on hand. Below, she breaks down her top four tactics that make the brand tick in the age of digital saturation and TikTok dances.

Interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

On pivoting from denim to a luxury womenswear and lifestyle business

I knew denim wasn’t for me, because it’s a tough business. I don’t want to use the word “mathematical,” but it’s a strategic business. It wasn’t the type of business I wanted to have at Simon Miller.

I really wanted this lifestyle, and I wanted to share it…kind of build the whole world around this brand. That was way more my path. So I definitely pivoted; that was a business decision I made to stop doing denim and stop doing menswear and really focus on this women’s lifestyle brand. It made a very intentional, direct path towards that.

On appealing to its customer demographic

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I wanted to make clothes and accessories for the working creative. So I’ve always had this woman in mind: She’s creative, meaning she’s expressive; she’s bold; she wants to wear garments, accessories, clothing that speak; but she’s working, so she’s on the go; she’s got to feel comfortable; she’s got to be attainable.

I very much use my life—and that’s from every touchpoint, from interiors, home, and lifestyle and everything—to inspire the brand. But that’s been my mission is to develop this playful luxury brand for the working creative.

On pivoting to digital and maintaining its wholesale business

Our biggest spend is still on digital, for sure. We are pivoting a little bit to putting the money back into wholesale marketing, because I think with all the shifts in digital, paid social, becoming a little bit more of a challenging space. We are working closer with our wholesale partners to make sure that we are actually strong partners and are doing our part as well. Also contributing because they have such great reach and such a great, targeted audience that we are partnering with them more and more, just in terms of getting our brands on the forefront of their platforms.

On keeping up with IRL marketing, collaborations, and working with influencers

I think now more than ever, influencers in the digital community are supporting brands more when they have that face time and they are engaging in communities. So we are making efforts to kind of build that community, whatever that is, in small and big ways here in LA or in New York, and continue to kind of get the product in front of people.

We’re looking towards pop-up stores as well. It was the next move for us just in terms of forward-facing, in-person activations. I’ve actually stepped away from doing fashion shows, if you will, and I’m doing more intimate one-on-one press previews. Because I definitely am trying to steer my focus towards the end consumer…We have our second big collaboration launching in May. It’s with Mango and it’s a 60-piece high summer collection. We’re doing a big event in Menorca, [Spain,] and we’re doing a whole gifting suite in LA and getting a board around it. It’s a big campaign partnering with Highsnobiety as well. So [collaborations] are a big part of our communication strategy.

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How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]

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How to Train ChatGPT to Write in Your Brand’s Tone of Voice [Infographic]

Are you looking for ways to improve your ChatGPT output? Want to train it to write in a more unique tone of voice, in order to better suit your branding?

The Creative Marketer shares his ChatGPT prompt tips in this infographic. To enact these, add “Write like [INSERT CHARACTER]” at the start of your ChatGPT instructions.

TCM breaks things down into the following categories:

  • Innocent
  • Sage
  • Explorer
  • Ruler
  • Creator
  • Caregiver
  • Lover
  • Hero
  • Everyman
  • Magician
  • Jester
  • Outlaw

Check out the infographic for more information.

A version of this post was first published on the Red Website Design blog.

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Elon Musk reinstates far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on X

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Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been reinstated on X, formerly known as Twitter, by company owner Elon Musk – Copyright GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File Joe Buglewicz

Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, on Sunday reinstated far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on the social media platform, a year after vowing never to let him return.

Jones, who claimed that a December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 20 children and six educators was a hoax, was banned from the platform — then still known as Twitter — in 2018 for violating its “abusive behavior policy.”

He was also sued by families of the victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting and ordered by a judge in the case to pay up more than a billion dollars in damages last year.

Musk had himself promised never to let the Infowars host back on the social media platform, which he bought last year for $44 billion.

But following a poll Musk conducted on X asking whether Jones should be reinstated, to which some two million users responded, he flipped that decision.

“I vehemently disagree with what he said about Sandy Hook, but are we a platform that believes in freedom of speech or are we not?” the SpaceX founder said on X.

But Shannon Watts, founder of the group Moms Demand Action group which pushes for tighter gun laws, said that “defamation is not free speech.”

Musk’s decision comes the same week that the Sandy Hook families commemorate the 11th anniversary of the December 14 shooting, which Jones alleged was staged to allow the government to crack down on gun rights.

Jones’ followers harassed the bereaved families for years, accusing parents of murdered children of being “crisis actors” whose children had never existed.

It also came a week after Musk had responded to advertisers pulling out of X because of far-right posts and hate speech, including an apparent endorsement by Musk himself of an anti-Semitic tweet.

Asked whether he would respond to the advertising exodus, Musk said in an interview with journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin that the advertisers could “go f*** yourself.”

Jones, who has a million followers on X, returned to the site with his first post re-tweeting Andrew Tate, the controversial former kickboxer facing rape and human trafficking charges in Romania, in which he hailed Jones’ “triumphant return”

US media reported that as of Sunday, the account of Jones’ controversial show Infowars was still banned.

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Instagram Launches New ‘Close Friends Only’ Podcast to Showcase Celebrity Users

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Instagram Launches New ‘Close Friends Only’ Podcast to Showcase Celebrity Users

Not sure if this will be a valuable addition, or another stream that’ll fade out pretty quick, as Meta stops paying attention to it.

Today, Instagram has launched a new podcast called “Close Friends Only”, which it says will present “the latest on culture – from memes and icks, to fashion and friendship – all from your favorite celebrities.

And they’ve gone big out of the gate, with the first episode featuring Ice Spice in conversation with Doja Cat.

The conversation sees the two stars discuss their favorite memes, their favorite animals, celebrity crushes, experiences in flirting on IG, their juiciest DMs, and more.

Which will no doubt get a heap of attention, and will help make Instagram a bigger focus for youngsters seeking to replicate their idols. But in terms of practical advice or tips, yeah, there might not be a heap there.

But it could be worth tuning in anyway, in order to get the lowdown on the latest trends, from some of the people that are leading the way on cultural shifts.

But then again, as noted, it’ll be interesting to see how IG follows this first episode up, and whether they keep running regular episodes of the podcast with more celebrities.

Either way, it’s an interesting promotional vehicle for IG, especially given that it’s focusing on musicians, as TikTok becomes an even more critical platform for music promotion.

Maybe, then, this will be Instagram’s counter to that, but again, we’ll have to wait and see whether more episodes arrive.

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