Marketers Show Style this Fashion Week

The Fall 2006 Olympus Fashion Week will be Webcast by a handful of marketers. Content includes packaged video and features on portals and wireless carriers and sponsored, live Webcasts of each show.

Sports and lifestyle marketing firm IMG Worldwide teamed with MSN Video and Sprint to bring packaged-coverage to fashionistas at large. The partnership includes a site set up by IMG, IMGFashionworld.com; a content package on MSN Video; and exclusive video on Sprint multimedia phones.

MSN’s package includes video, blogs and editorial. Preroll in front of each video is run of network. It’s a shame fashion advertisers haven’t caught on to the potential of the Web, and content like this.

Additional marketers including Pepsi’s Aquafina have a presence at the physical show and online. In its second seasonal outing with Olympus Fashion Week, the water bottler ventured from prerecorded podcasts in the fall to live Webcasts of the show on its Web site. Marketing efforts also progressed from an exclusive external site (previously found at Aquafinafashion.com) to main placement on Aquafina.com.

These initiatives are compelling because they give an online presence to an industry that’s stayed a little too much offline. With an ongoing sponsorship from Aquafina, and other marketers giving the biannual show a virtual presence, will clothing designers get on board? The campaigns are here, will the fashion worl follow suit?