Growing social commerce at Represent

0:02My name is Jill Gagan, Editor of Drapers, and I'm delighted to welcome you to Drapers Talks, our podcast series bringing you cutting-edge content from our live events. This episode was recorded live at Drapers Social Summit on the 20th of May. From unlocking the true value of influencer partnerships to navigating emerging platforms, we explored how to cut through the noise, build real communities, and drive measurable growth in an ever-shifting digital landscape. In this episode, Draper's Deputy Editor, Gabrielle Durvanouskas, discusses scaling a brand through social commerce with Liam Shannon, Head of Marketing at Represent.

0:38Enjoy! Hi Liam, welcome. How are you on already? Here we are. How are you? Might have been ready. Closing the day off, aren't I, as well? Pardon?

0:46Liam Shannon: Closing the day off. Yeah, absolutely. Big draw, Liam, a big draw. So we'll be talking about how Represent fosters deep community engagement at a brand so known for its social reach. please do send in your questions for liam using slido the hashtag is dss26 so liam tell us represent massive global brand socially um how do you balance those channels what what has led to your success how we balance it isn't a straightforward answer i'd say to be honest with you when i started to represent five years ago i was about 10 stone lighter and a lot less gray hairs so it doesn't exist um the drug and that is the beauty of the game right the the core of everything that we do at represent is authenticity and everything we do we kind of touched on it there a little bit as well like finding what your unique selling point is or what people is this mic doing i don't know is it i don't know that might be me are we on are we here liam yeah it might be my voice i'm joking um we kind of go off the authenticity so we do everything that we can possibly to try and be as authentic as we can using George using our own people internally and using the models to kind of reflect the truth of sizing and quality and all those different bits and bobs and then really how that extends is just working that across all the other channels as well so you're just kind of almost accumulating that over to everything else is this doing your nothing as well I'm not yeah mine's okay but I think we can get you a hand is it doing it is it not messing up oh sorry that's just me just kicking off then sorry i think we're okay i can hear myself i can hear you yeah i think we're good started okay okay sorry um so yeah so i think you have three different instagram accounts even men's women's 247 lots of different time zones to deal with oh yeah how do you deal how do you deal with that uh very late nights is usually the how it goes it ends up being very planned and then it ends up not actually going towards the plan but we look at an enormous amount of data to try and educate as much as we possibly can so the 247 side for example one of the challenges is that at the minute it's doing really really good in australia but it's also doing really good in germany so we have to be very conscious of the 12-hour difference or the two-hour difference that there is whilst also planning how we're trying to build um build a luxury image an attainable image and build desirability towards a collection on the mainline side and then keeping the you know the appetite there and the women's side as well like we've seen that the the female customer or female consumer interacts with social is very different to the men's side and then even the fitness side the 247 side of the business interacts even different to those two so planning it not doing the plan and then changing everything around pretty much but we we are a very good strategic place where everything does make a lot of sense it's just we're an emotionally driven authentic brand which you know we we go off what we see in comments and all those type of things to make sure it works well and did you find that the best strategy to kind of split these accounts across from each other rather than run them all in one so men's women's 247 yep rather you know do you find that kind of dilutes the followers at all or not really uh to an extent it definitely does but however we have definitely seen that we've got those different consumer profiles in those different in those different accounts as well because part of what represent is as well as we want to go from from day to night to the gym so we do want the person to be the full 360 customer but at the same time we can't just talk about fitness products to a fashion consumer because in my research and what i've seen in person is typically those people aren't the same as fitness guys like normally if you're really into fitness you don't want to dress too long but if you're really if you're really fashionable you're not nowadays actually it's definitely changed to be fair but when i started at rep you definitely weren't into your fitness as much you were kind of just a trendy dude then the same on the female side that we can't expect to communicate to people in the same way there has to be different approaches and with that i mean you're a founder-led brand this you know george and mike is still quite a big part of business on social so how do you um keep creating that content that feels authentic again big buzzword of the day while still driving those measurable commercial results yeah so we kind of we use george and mike strategically now i would say like i i would advise the boys on x y and z product selling slow or you know my go-to-market plan is two months out so i want you to start this nugget at this point then this twitter account will do it at this point and this pr will do whatever the the idea really there is that those are the guys that actually they build the fundamentals for everything else to build off.

5:32Liam Shannon: They're the guys that we've got an enormous community. We've got a database of hundreds of thousands of people and those are replicated across our social channels. So people follow those guys to get style and advice, but also to be aspirational. So yeah, they're always the perfect pillar to go over. But you are almost dancing with the devil a little bit at points because when you've got so much reliance on people, they can make mistakes they can say certain things they can do whatever it may be have a few jars or whatever it may be lock them out of the exactly exactly and then and then you're kind of held ransom to whatever that is so we do really try and be as clever as we possibly can around that but i also wouldn't say i push them too much i really don't if i was pushing too much then it actually then is inauthentic it would feel forced yeah my main ethos really is like we we kind of sitting between luxury and streetwear i don't my goal for the brand is to be luxurious and to be aspirational i don't think luxury sells products i think luxury just shows product and it's just where and when and who is the nuggets that my job is to try and do so if i was trying to get those boys to sell product that wouldn't be authentic to what i'm actually even trying to achieve no brilliant um and so again things have to feel natural and not not kind of pull them out on camera too often i think no not really um and how about driving conversion so how do you work with the different platforms i know we spoke about tiktok shop previously so yeah so that one's in the works and i think the main thing for me really is having the right product pricing tiering architecture within everything that we're doing so we have a mainline side of the business we have um we call it a dna side which is more the jersey products and hoodies and t-shirts that you're probably all familiar with us on then we've got the 247 side and then we've got um the women's side like those are all different nuggets they're all different consumers so what we're trying to basically juggle there is what is the commercial entity within the business who do we need to show up in the right way with and who can we continue to be the aspirational nugget for really and tiktok shop i think is going to be a great vehicle for getting us out there in the commercial consumers eyes um knowing that that has the halo effect then to introduce thousands of people a high percentage of new customers that will at least be aware of represent and we now know you know you need six or seven touch points with a brand especially average order value sitting over 120 pound it's not an easy quick decision so we need to have those little nuggets and i think tiktok shop mitigating you know websites and having that automated within the actual platform itself I think to represent when we probably get that up and running within the next month or so will be successful I just want to be very careful around you know the image that we've worked so hard for over the last 12 years to to build and we've got a great relationship with TikTok so we're already working on those little intricacies but I'm so confident that it will be a good success for us.

8:29Perfect perfect and how does the way you kind of interact with TikTok perhaps differ to Instagram as well?

8:36Liam Shannon: Yeah so TikTok for me I a lot of the time everything's very high-end and really polished to represent like that's really pride ourselves on that you know we want to make movies and we want to make stories that people relate to and see themselves in but i do see a side where on the tiktok side where it was one of the questions on there before around like employee content like i do see a side on tiktok where we will get braver a lot of our stuff is bravery to showing more people behind the brand showing the the bits and bobs that go on because although it can look very sexy from the outside in there are quite a lot of uglinesses that go on inside, which I actually think people would be really fascinated to see.

9:13Liam Shannon: You know, we, the test and learning of some of our products is genuinely phenomenal. And I think if people saw that, they'd realize how much quality and how much effort goes into those things. So, yeah, I want to show a slightly different side on there. We are kind of building to that actually, to be honest with you at the minute. A lot of this is as we're kind of, we've been around for 12 years, but we're really kicked off since 2020-ish. A lot of this now is just, testing and learning and mitigating and testing and learning and keep going and that's that probably is the next phase really interesting well we'll be watching represents channels for sure um and please explain how the business works with influencers content creators and the kind of tiering system that you guys have nice yeah so it kind of goes into the pricing architecture and the product architecture that i kind of mentioned before like we it sounds crazy to say but we had we're on on a path now to have 62 collections released within this year now you'll all know there's 52 weeks in a year so that's absolutely bonkers so what i've kind of introduced there then is this whole tiering system this whole architecture within the business where um influencers athletes product pr everything you can think of the bells and whistles all has its own tiering system within there so tier one you know in the pr world you'd imagine gq esquires etc drapers etc you know all the all the top dogs and and then your tier one influences would be people who have maybe got a lot more of a social following but they're the guys that their job their kpis to get your eyes on your business and then you're quite selective then with the product that those people would also be wearing because you can't be known for 50 products but you might be able to get known for five so what your five hero pieces that you want to strategically place and then we put them in at different parts of that journey again like on the on the luxury front my main thing is 60 % happens before a release 10 % is the release and 30 % after the release so if we can try and have this kind of narrative and strategic focus through everything that means then that I can spin the 247 plate and the represent plate and the women's plate at the same time or hopefully I can that's very impressive keep all those plates spinning for sure um and you touched on it earlier as well I know that represent was founded as a male orientated business but you launched women's wear comparatively recently um how does the engagement differ between male and female shoppers on social media so i think men take a lot longer to convert is that right yeah so we've kind of seen like there's an enormous amount of research that i've kind of done before we launched women's which was around february last year and actually our own socials are showing it ourselves and we're looking into the analytics and stuff but it's it It would appear that females don't necessarily need as many touch points to purchase from us.

12:00Liam Shannon: They seem a little bit more risk-averse. They'll give it a go and they'll try it. The returns threshold is quite nice. The free shipping threshold is quite nice. The returns policy is really good. Whereas on the men's side, I think what we're kind of basically seeing there is that we are competing with an enormous amount of what I kind of say is share of wallet competitors, but also brand desirability competitors as well. so we've seen that someone needs about six or seven touch points to end up purchasing from us whereas on the female side it's a lot shorter but with the female side those releases are actually strategically placed about every two months or so for a reason because we don't really want to overface we don't want to do the 62 that we basically do on the men's side and overface and cannibalize our own product it allows us to tell more stories and build up to those things a bit more and then be more reactive with it after um it would appear my main thing is that people trust people and it would it would appear that the female world is a lot more trusting of other females and guys are with other guys the guys are pretty savage yeah really from what i've seen anyway to be fair but i know it's not always because everyone's savage yeah that's interesting interesting and did you say that also women are more um are more likely to mix different brands mix different whereas men kind of buy their one yeah so we kind of see that on the guy's side like we know we've got the share of other consumers but we do see pretty much a straight line you know top bottom and footwear would be the typical guy consumer again because they're pretty savage they'll literally just go with one brand and they'll go with or they'll go with another brand like i don't wear nike shoes or baddie socks it's a bit weird but i won't do that yeah and people are like that with other brands um they're just socks it's not that deep is it but um yeah um but on the female side you kind of get definitely a mix of wallet on the actual like because because it's bags it's shoes it's jewelry it's sunglasses it's you know whatever it may be like it makes it in my opinion more competitive and harder to actually cut through with but i think actually there's also a bit of a you know if you actually understand the market regardless male or female if you understand that you look at the stats you look at the information you keep your ear close to the ground and most of these things humans are humans at the end of the day so if you're it into what you kind of see then it does kind of work like there's no point fighting battles that you just make it yourself definitely definitely and please everybody get your questions in for Liam as well and we'll have some time to get to them at the end of the session um and looking ahead so what type of challenges does represent or other brands in this kind of space have uh in breaking through today in social media competitors are out there as well so yeah I think I think now with how commerce is going i would also i'd say basically there's brands from holland and germany where you know we're trying to merge into those markets trying to get into australia it's it's now just as easy to get over here as it is for us to get over there so the big challenge really is is especially as we scale as well is trying to stay as authentic as we possibly can lots of other brands are coming in and trying to take from the table pretty much you know um tiktok shop being like a really great example that actually is really mitigating a lot of risk for lots of brands to be able to come in build an enormous consumer base and you can amplify from there and you know replicate accumulate whatever it may be from there so that yeah i think there's that you know ai is a lot of a buzzword at the minute but i think that kind of gives everyone the same competitive advantage i think if you if you're out of the game for a month you might be out of the game for a year so you need to really stay on top of your on on top of things there but i think the opportunities you know others represent anyway we've got an incredible benchmark to still build off you know we are quite big we've done really well for ourselves but it still feels like a blank canvas that still needs to get painted yeah definitely interesting and um how about social commerce as a whole as well evolving over the next few years so how can brands stay ahead really so i think we mentioned llms in the past and kind of agentic Yeah, I mean, honestly, even since we spoke, a lot of that's advanced in the last two or three weeks, which is really, really exciting, to be fair.

16:12Liam Shannon: The old gig of patient SEO seems to be not as patient anymore. That's definitely an avenue where everyone can really take advantage of that if you give your website as much information as possible and you build the credibility that we've been aspiring to build for years. then I think that can kind of streamline that slightly but I mean um yeah I've been exposed to loads more in the last like two or three weeks which I think like I said I think if you if you leave it a month you end up missing your competitive advantages arguably gone at that point but we've started to see around about 15 percent of our traffic coming from LLM so I want to now try and kick on and see what we can do there but like every every single day something changes there So, yeah, it's pretty hard.

16:58Liam Shannon: You've got to keep your ear close to the ground. But I think if you can crack the code, you know, we're really well covered with Shopify. Our scores are absolutely incredible on that front. So we've got the coverage that I'm confident that we need. But it is a bit of a changing landscape. Every day you have to just keep your ear to the ground. Yeah, I'd say so. Interesting. Interesting. Difficult as well. We have a bit of time to get your questions to Liam. Thank you very much for sending them in. So we'll go to the top one. what type of content does the audience resonate most with? So product features, founder content community.

17:34Liam Shannon: All three. Because the reason why it's all three is because the founder content side is definitely something for our mainline men's side, which speaks to the consumer. Like people see George and they see Mike as aspirational figures. Mike, especially on like the graphics and the Garmin side and George more on the general aspirational. He lives in LA, so he wouldn't be jelly. You know, like he's got that lifestyle that young lads to look up to so founder content using those guys as trust signals works really well both on organic and on paid on the paid front product features is a really big one uh kind of within the same of the community one actually on the two four seven front because we're stepping into a world where we're against the knights and the addies and the big big big dogs that you know they've got moqs are enormous we're not doing that so we really want to get into the nitty-gritty of what makes this fabric breathable what makes it waterproof why you'd have our shoe over those guys in an authentic way which is a battle in itself so the product features is just important we definitely go into the product features on the female side a little bit more as well that's something we've kind of i guess kind of like learned the hard way to be fair when we started women's we almost did the same as guys and it's kind of like well these aren't these aren't working it's not working the same way and through messing around and finding out we basically found that you know those those features the qualities are really big things sustainability those type of things are things that can pull out there and then the community side particularly for the younger demographic particularly for the fitness side of the business um people like i said people trust people people see people they resonate with them and they want to be part of that we're trying not make to not make it a cult but i can't think of another word where you know we want we want these people to build their own community and feel part of something even if you're a even if you're a solo runner on a sunday or you do hierarchies like you can build an association with us now one thing we have been really conscious of is that across the board is we don't want to i do really want to be very aspirational but i know that you can't be that aspirational that people don't actually have the relationship with it yeah you can have the guys in the six packs competing at high rocks and marathons and all that type of stuff you can have them there they're like your action men you know what i mean look great and everything but then like the guys like me which i obviously i'm one of them but the guys like me you need to you need to have people that actually like are the trust and actually resonate with them so they're like the community anchors almost within that you know yeah we do play a lot within our athlete and influencer game to try and address most of those things as well so keeping that approachability as well perhaps to i think it's something well i know it's something we talk around it a lot like me and my team talk around it a lot it comes from the top down but we kind of strategize around that i don't want to ever get so big that we're not humans at the same time you know we're just a brand that started in bolton not a lot happens in bolton you know i mean like but i always wanted to stay there george's in la living an absolute lovely life and his brothers chose to live in bolton which makes no sense hilarious but we are just humans at the same time like genuinely are the community side shows that it shows george it shows mike it shows our athletes but you can touch them and you can talk to them like normal human beings really nice and um leads on nicely to the second question actually so gonglodas is living up in la how do you still speak to the kind of founded in the uk story we try and keep that narrative through as much as we can like there's a there's a few different pillars that we kind of continue to try and talk around within our content and that i say it's more manchester because i love manchester but it is more of the uk vibe especially in the states as you're trying to break out there like those guys have got a fascination with the uk it seems like we've got a fascination with the us so we we do try and play on that as much as we possibly can we use that as i would say use it as that the credible anchor when we're talking with you guys and we're talking with gq and the condonass gang like that's the stuff that we really want to we want to be the representation of british luxury across the globe now we've got some big players like burberry who are you know doing a phenomenal job of that but that is you know if you if you go on our website every product will have that british twist to it every campaign has that british twist to it like we do an enormous amount in the us but we have the british twist like the red thread across all of it is to is to still try and seem quite rooted even though we internally are extremely ambitious with fitting into the american consumer fitting into the dutch consumer whatever it may be um there's definitely a there's definitely a fascination there from the globe to the uk just as much as the uk has got it elsewhere brilliant um and taking it back to the community level so one of your stores has a coffee shop i believe so somebody would like to know uh whether you know where did that come from was this influenced by social trends in any way uh to be fair it's a massive space so you asked the question no i'm joking um it's up it's an absolute massive space uh the plate that the store that we had originally did have a i think they had a bakery in there actually so they had the facilities there but obviously we've seen the brands like i think anne have got one amelie and dora have got one and i think really what we're trying to do is we're not actually trying to make our stores places where people shop we're just trying to make it where people dwell similar to the website similar to the brand in general like like i said i believe that luxury doesn't sell i think the store doesn't need to do that you know if we can it's three pound fifty a coffee that's pretty decent in london you know like we just we We just want to try and add a little nugget that people can enjoy the brand with.

23:17Liam Shannon: And we don't want the gateway to be, you know, a 110 pound t-shirt or a 160 pound hoodie. We don't want it to be that. But we've only got the coffee shop currently in London. We're talking around getting one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's a really, it's really good coffee. The crazy story there is that it would have been easier to have just hired a barista and an existing coffee coffee. company yeah and just plonked them in yeah then what we actually did is find our own beans wow all our paristas get all the machinery and all that type of stuff and do it that way lovely but i guess it's kind of one of one and it is really good and actually last week we launched and deliveroo and it's popping off now yeah yeah a lot of coffee fans in the room um and how about the single most important metric you uh track for social performance so what do you measure is it likes shares um purchases even uh for social for social for me for me actually generally it's actually more around like the comments across everything so we obviously track perception i can positive negative um we're looking at a few clever tools actually that can kind of address some concerns quicker than our own cs can stuff like now i personally would say the comments are a big one because they're the barometer because our community is so big they go on there and if you've done good it's like amazing you know you get your flowers and everyone loves you if you've done bad it's like an atomic bomb going off and you find out very quick that you've done something pretty bad so that's that's the main area for success in the social context with my other hats on there's quite a few other metrics that are pretty important but in the social context of building the trust and the advocacy and basically trying to build future rep ambassadors the comments is massive and like i said three channels two channels on youtube three on three on tiktok three on twitter like 20 channels so you quickly get a read of what's good what's bad what you should address um you can soften the blow before it gets too bad definitely and also if people are taking the time to leave a comment that means they're really engaged exactly that They're the people in the community.

25:30Liam Shannon: So that's when they become the advocates. And if something is good, like we were talking before, like if something is good, that's your actual little nugget then where you can go again and go again and go again. You can find out those things. And they're the best guys that do it for you. Perfect. Well, thank you very much. I think that's all we have time for, sadly. But thank you for your time, Liam. Nice to have you. This podcast was brought to you by Drapers, delivering you exclusive content from Drapers Social Summit. We hope you enjoyed it and thank you to our speakers for their time and expertise.

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