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Essay / Personal branding in the context of the network economy: the case of Chiara Ferragni
Table of contentsSummaryIntroductionPersonal branding: how to become “someone”A salad worth 11 million dollarsConclusionsReferencesSummarySome people have acquired so much fame and notoriety that they have established themselves as crucial reference points for consumers, fundamental spaces for “the production and circulation of fashion discourse”. This exponentially growing phenomenon has revolutionized the marketing industry and the very concept of the fashion industry: fashion bloggers have been included in the institutional system of fashion, alongside the traditional media industry and viewed with fashion journalism (Pedroni, 2014). Say no to plagiarism. . Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”?Get the original essayIntroductionInterpersonal and virtual communication via social networks today plays a fundamental role for personal and professional success. We live in an age where we are in constant communication with others and where relationships are increasingly transforming into online connections. Knowing how to interact effectively with others and being able to interact with everyone are the keys to professional success and staff well-being. Today, we want to improve and expand communication skills through strategic communication in order to facilitate the achievement of our objectives, because it is becoming more and more necessary to market yourself by differentiating yourself from others. Personal branding is therefore the reputation that we create on the web, everything that we do with the Internet, on social networks, on forums and the values that we communicate through the web which help us present a good image of ourselves online. In the first part of this article, I will try to explain what Personal Branding is and what advantages it achieves; in the second part, I will briefly present the case study of effective use of social media of a particular Italian woman who has established herself in a short time on the international scene: Chiara Ferragni. Chiara Ferragni is widely confirmed in the online and offline world. life and has had success with her personal brand. His story can make us think that if we respect the laws of networks, any company can assert itself successfully. Personal Branding: how to become “someone” Personal Branding is an activity that, consciously or not, we have all been practicing for a long time. time. Entrepreneur Tom Peters, CEO of FastCompany and author of the article "The Brand Called YOU", first coined the term Personal Branding in 1997, meaning, with this terminology, the art of knowing how to build your own personal brand. It is therefore possible to define the Personal Branding phenomenon as the ability of each of us to market ourselves, in a context where the word Brand is no longer understood as a corporate brand but a personal one. Doing Personal Branding therefore means being able to positively influence people regarding the perception of the Personal Brand. Building your own online identity starts with choosing a name: imaginary or easily attributable to us. In this sense, the “real name” policies promoted by Facebook and Google promote continuity between online and offline identity. The name you use to make yourself known online is also the first step towards building your personal reputation. The first examples of self-presentation were chats and blogs that used text-based communication. To these are now added SNS, which benefit from the functionalitiesinteractive Web 2.0. Personal home pages are the premier method of online self-presentation, described as "carefully controlled performances by which self-presentation occurs under optimal conditions." Social media means rebuilding and growing a business, an online social network, using digital tools such as social media by adding friends, clients or colleagues and sharing with them different types of information. A user can fill out a personal profile, add multimedia content and decide what to share and how to interact with other network participants, especially with a view to a possible job opportunity, in many social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn which offer the possibility of “becoming friends” with agencies and companies that would otherwise not have been known in offline life. Personal Branding strategy on social media is based precisely on defining our strengths and successfully and effectively communicating them to others by answering these questions. : Who am I? What can I do? How can I do it? What are my strengths and what do I offer? Why am I better or different from my competitors? In this sense, “Personal Branding is not self-promotion, understood in the negative form of the term, but rather an increase in the value of what we do”3. Branding aims to differentiate products, services, businesses and people; based on the concept of singularity, it aims to create in the minds of consumers the idea that nothing similar exists on the market. The multiple opportunities currently available, both for the transmission of information and for intermediation and interaction, have given rise to the era of Web 2.0, a state of continuous evolution of the World Wide Web. This is why the use of social networks for work and reputation is now a necessity which is no longer reserved for companies alone but is aimed above all at individuals: true protagonists of the web and our interconnected era. In the modern web digital economy, the interconnections between people are infinite, the available information is global and has a very wide assortment, but at the same time it is poorly controlled or controllable. “The Internet today offers many possibilities to optimize and make our brand known: it allows us to control the dissemination of our image online, thanks to special instruments; to protect our image and brand identity and to obtain work contacts. "It is essential to turn to market niches because in this way there is a greater chance that the Brand will be known to the public, but not only that, in this way the Brander has more time to learn how to manage its own business and prepare for the mass market by gradually asserting its own presence An equally important element in boosting brand awareness is networking and engaging with people, both in an offline context, for example on the. workplace, than in online chat with network members Thanks to social networks, we have become accustomed to sharing information with friends and relatives, removing the initial idea that the Internet is ". not a place.” We have represented ourselves on the Net with the same references that we have offline, highlighting many aspects of our private life, even if we represent multiple aspects of our social identity or our face. In 2014, Facebook launched a new application called Rooms, a discussion forum where relationships, contacts, names no longer matter:People exist because their interests exist and not their physical characteristics. The purpose of these rooms is to come back and share your thoughts with people who share the same interests as you. A return to anonymity therefore, which represents a decisive return to the past. Username chats are back and cannot be restricted or controlled in any way. A system which, in the era of Facebook profiles anchored to names and individuals, seemed out of use. According to Facebook's explanation of Rooms at launch, the feature is different from group chats because it focuses on discussing specific topics with people you may or may not know. Group chats, on the other hand, are usually only joined by family members and friends you know. Judging by the lack of awareness of the "new" app, even though it was launched five years ago, and the fact that it currently only works in a few English-speaking countries and not on a global level, we We can assume that “the face” matters more than ever in our society. This is why social networks are dominated by applications that allow the user's identity to be displayed with images. People show rather than tell on social media sites. One of the reasons why Instagram has become so popular is that “image prominence gives users a preference for showing their lifestyle rather than explaining its characteristics” (Zhao, Grasmuck and Martin 2008), thus reinforcing norms and habits that are only known to insiders.A salad worth 11 million dollarsThe identity of Chiara Ferragni was born with the blog The Blonde Salad (in 2009) which, initially, was configured like a diary orchestrated around a precise “essence”, namely the passion for fashion, which invests Ferragni’s “media” daily life. Already in 2015, Chiara becomes a case study at Harvard Business School, enters the FORBES 30 under 30 list and in 2017 the same institution names her as the most powerful influencer in the world. Today, his net worth is $11 million. The image has a predominant role precisely due to the nature of the blog which offers fashion products valued by a person who does not just present clothes and accessories in static poses, typical of fashion magazines, but who almost offers a staging in which attitude and experiential dimensions play an essential role. From 2013, the company TBS Crew Srl (today a team of 28 people), built in 2011 by Chiara Ferragni with Riccardo Pozzoli, co-founder and CEO, evolves with the entry of Alessio Sonzogni. The team begins a careful selection process of collaborations with well-known brands, all studied from a long-term perspective. In order to strengthen the bond between them and Chiara, who is becoming more and more famous, they create limited edition clothing and accessories for some of them, sold in the e-commerce section of their website. We are therefore gradually witnessing a redesign of the blog which over time is transformed into a lifestyle magazine (which addresses subjects such as fashion, trends, celebrity looks and beauty): “a platform for inspiration (integrated into an e-commerce service) whose marketing on social networks aims to promote partner companies following a strategy that we define camouflage marketing, or the camouflage of the advertising message in the daily life of influencers” (Terracciano, 2017, p .32)This renewal is also reflected in the blog's logo which is no longer identified by the photo of Chiara immersed in a bathtub full of salad, forvisually represent the content "blonde salad" (which, according to Ferragni, means that the blog is "a salad of me". The ingredients will be those that have always distinguished me: fashion, photography, travel and lifestyle') , but with neon pink writing that evokes an American-style logo. A choice that reflects the new path undertaken by the platform which is the result of teamwork in which Ferragni has the role of creative director. Furthermore, as Pozzoli notes, “today blog outfits are outdated, thanks to Instagram, which has enabled the phenomenon of micro-blogging and the birth of influencers. Blogging on the platform still exists, but the content needs to be much more complex than just a photo of a look. The Chiara Ferragni brand gave its name, from 2010, to a line of shoes, then extended to clothing. and accessories (which you can find in the first flagship store opened in Milan, in 2017, in a strategic position in the heart of Porta Nuova, an area with a high density of major fashion brands). Unlike television, new media are a space for confrontation and participation, for creativity that comes from everyone. Among these are smartphones which, being "mobile", allow users to immortalize/save every moment of their life, as it occurs, thus producing a visible memory composed of moments, isolated fragments captured spoke camera in constant movement. While "personal photographs contained in albums in the past were rare and therefore valuable, today digital photographs are experienced simply as tools for sharing emotions with others." Instagram is configured as a sort of constellation of communities. In which the community built by Chiara Ferragni has nearly seventeen million faithful. Its success is undoubtedly due to the independence it expresses in relation to official trends, originating from the fashion industry, and which therefore brings it closer to the public. Chiara Ferragni’s “accessible fashion” (Terracciano, 2017) becomes the commercial product around which the narrative conveyed by Instagram revolves. Ferragni subjectivizes the clothes she wears by giving them their own emotions, thanks also to the captions in which she frequently expresses euphoric moods such as: "so excited", "so happy", "I love this top", "a look so cute”, 'so proud of', 'what a great collection'; aided in this also by facial expressions that convey joy and authentic satisfaction. Fashion magazine models are beautiful, but most of them seem to remain distant, ethereal and display an icy beauty while Chiara summons her followers with a friendly "hi guys", almost inviting them to participate in her private life . This summons provokes, among other things, a mobilization of the sensitivity of followers expressed through “likes”. As Chiara explains: “I used to mix and match Chanel bags with Zara or H&M clothes. My followers always loved this because they could see how cool a cheap sweater can be when worn well. It was something they could really relate to” (Keinan et al. 2015). As she suggests, it is very important for a follower to be able to identify with her personal style, which shows her as a wearer of high-end and mainstream labels. By showing her audience typical productions, she gave her subscribers tools to recognize her personal style and thus create a relationship with them. As Ferragni says: “Instagram became almost overnight the most used instrument in the fashion industry” (Keinan et al. 2015) and therefore, it could no longer..