KEY POINTS:
Media, sponsors and invited guests will be lining up for catwalk-side seats tomorrow with launch of the eighth Air New Zealand Fashion Week.
The six-day Auckland event draws overseas buyers and media coverage that will help designer businesses with publicity to market their products overseas.
For media it promises easy-to-get glitzy content to brighten editorial pages and TV news bulletins and provide content for websites.
A symbiotic relationship between media and marketing is entrenched at fashion events around the world.
Organiser Myken Stewart estimates Air New Zealand Fashion Week has drawn around $3 million in sponsorship with the bulk coming from 27 partners.
Seventeen have been with Fashion Week for three years or more.
Elsewhere 20 affiliates pay $5000-$10,000 that provide an association with Fashion Week but does not involve as much work.
Organisers estimate Fashion Week last year provided editorial coverage worth $50 million.
Editorial content is hard to value and a big part of the sponsorship are in contra payments. For example, the biggest sponsor, Air New Zealand, flew 60 people around the country.
In past years current affairs hosts have been based beside the catwalk and their involvement has encouraged sponsors aimed at leveraging local sales have been boosting their involvement.
But the growth of digital media, combined with a large number of magazines focused on female demographics, is likely to mean a small flood of frocks this week.
Rather than sit on the sidelines, sponsors like Air New Zealand and Westpac Bank are going beyond the traditional sideline role using the events to leverage their sales.
Air New Zealand is increasing its profile with a YouTube video of models sky jumping from a light aircraft.
"We aim for a campaign that is an event in its own right rather than a passive sponsorship on the sidelines," said Air New Zealand marketing general manager Steve Bayliss.
"The trend is away from interruption based marketing to attraction- based marketing that is entertaining in its own right."
Air New Zealand wins kudos using its ties to increase its nationalist image in the same way as it does for rugby.
Some question whether its sponsorship spend believed to be upwards of $300,000 - albeit partly in contra - is well directed.
One marketing director is sceptical about its impact: "Fashion Week connects strongly with 0.1 per cent of the population but it is a passing interest to (typical consumers) Rob and Janet in Palmerston North."
"The most interesting aspect of Fashion Week was that it gets spectacular and disproportionate media coverage", said the marketing director who would not be named.
A concert by rock supergroup U2 would have a much bigger impact on more people's lives but would draw a tiny proportion of the editorial coverage, the marketer said.
Bayliss says editorial coverage is a factor in its backing.
But the appeal of Fashion Week goes beyond the few who work in the industry or the number who actually buy fashion.
There were a lot of accessible labels like Huffer and designers set the trends for fashion which flows through for the wider population.
Mango PR boss Claudia MacDonald is working with Air New Zealand at Fashion Week and says Fashion Week still provides the best leverage.
"It started off as just a trade event. Now they have made it more about consumers. But what it means is that the longer the event goes on sponsors have to work harder to maintain the impact."
Deborah Pead of Pead PR handled PR for Fashion Week in 2003 when its client L'oreal was name sponsor..
"For media it is just about good content. There is a huge industry around fashion you just need to look at the magazine sector."
Pead is sceptical about the scale of the claimed benefits of Fashion Week to the fashion industry.
Fashion Week had lost some of its status and hype about its impact on sales was in danger of overwhelming what really happens.
Fashion week still generates a buzz but media were far more discerning how they approached it, she said.
Herald features editor Michele Crawshaw, who oversees titles such as Canvas and Viva, said there was still "a romantic kind of mystery" attached to Fashion Week.
"This is our chance to get a hands- on understanding of fashion, what it is and who creates it," she said.
"It's the next season. People want to know what they should be wearing and that sort of thing."
But does she think Fashion Week coverage sells magazines?
"I think it does and the online downloads during Fashion Week are huge. I think there is a real interest in it," she said.
