Every year, New York Fashion Week is anticipated by people around the world. High-end designers, fashion photographers, bloggers, and models wait for all year for this week. But this year, there was another audience counting down the days: Instagrammers.
Tommy Hilfiger hired two popular Instagrammers Brian Difeo and Anthony Danielle to organize an InstaMeet, which is a get together for Instagrammers to take artsy pictures and share photography advice. It might sound lame to us, but Hilfiger doesn’t think so. He gave these two (as well as a select group of Instagrammers chosen by Difeo and Danielle) backstage access, seats to the Tommy Hilfiger Women’s Fall 2014 show, and an opportunity to meet the designer.
InstaMeets are becoming more and more common as a way to advertise events and brands. Kat Irlin (pictured above), an Instagrammer in charge of organizing Lucky Magazine’s InstaMeet for Fashion Week, looks forward to InstaMeets. “It’s such a cool way of bringing like-minded people together. People at InstaMeets are super nice and passionate about photography, and I’ve made so many good friends at InstaMeets,” said Irlin.
Organizing an InstaMeet was Hilfiger’s way to cut through the cluttered world of social media. Using technology like Google Hangout, Instagram, and the incorporation of iPhones into the runway walk is a sign of the times. Jessica Sfera, digital and social media coordinator at Diesel, says that coming up with the next best thing is the only way to keep up. “It just gets increasingly hard to get through the clutter,” she says.
Some are questioning Hilfiger’s decision to hire inexperienced photographers rather than experts. After all, Difeo and Danielles have more than 100,000 followers and fashion photographers Chiara Ferragni and Aimee Song have more than 1 million followers. By choosing someone with a tenth of the followers as other designers, Hilifiger may have missed out on some publicity.
Did Hilfiger make the right call?
– Christine Schulze
IMC Hawks Blog 