Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#236: R. Scott French (Fashion, Public Relations) (pt. 1 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part one of our interview with fashion expert and serial entrepreneur, R. Scott French. He has extensive experience in all areas of the fashion industry, from concept, design, marketing, wholesale and retail sales, and production. In 2009, Scott co-founded a media company to organize the world’s fashion events into a single interactive port so fashion professionals can interact directly with event organizers. In 2020, he co-founded VERY New York, a public relations and events company. Scott is also a lecturer at the Parsons School of Design and serves on numerous advisory boards in the fashion industry. You'll want to hear this interview as we cover a variety of topics relevant to fashion and all arts fields.
In this episode:
The digital age has truly revolutionized every aspect of our lives, and the fashion industry is no exception. Scott shares his experience on how the shift from print to digital media has significantly impacted fashion designers, artists, and even consumers. We navigate the challenges of this evolution, including the lowered barriers of entry and the influence of celebrity culture. We get candid about the importance of media outreach and maintaining a constant presence in the industry, and the delicate dance of managing both brand and personal social media platforms.
What you present to the public matters, and in the world of fashion, it can either make or break you. We delve into how showcasing personal life in fashion can have its pitfalls. Something as simple as a graduation photo can be perceived as unprofessional in this industry that thrives on glamour and mystique. Tune in for some invaluable insights and practical advice, whether you're an aspiring artist, an established designer, or simply intrigued by the world of fashion. Be prepared to have your perspective broadened and your curiosity satisfied.
Show notes: https://www.artsentrepreneurshippodcast.com/episodes/236-r-scott-french-fashion-public-relations-pt-1-of-2
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy.
Nick Petrella:Heise and I'm Nick Petrella. Today we have Scott French with us on the podcast. He has extensive experience in all areas of the fashion industry, from concept design, marketing, wholesale and retail sales and production. In 2009, he co-founded a media company to organize the world's fashion events into a single interactive port so fashion professionals can interact directly with event organizers. Scott is a lecturer at the Parsons School of Design, serves on numerous advisory boards in the fashion industry and has many more accolades that you can read about on the link in the show notes. Thanks for being with us, scott.
R. Scott French:Thanks for having me.
Nick Petrella:Very. New York offers a lot of services and we will unpack them in the interview to help all in the arts learn about branding and publicity. Let's start by having you tell us why you decided to leave the production side of the fashion industry to focus on the fashion ecosystem as a whole through branding and publicity.
R. Scott French:It's a good question because everyone thought are you crazy? I had a successful collection of men's wear. I was showing on the runways each season during New York Fashion Week, but at the end of the show I always felt like, oh God, that's over. I was really disappointed at being over. At the same time, I wanted to be the one watching the show I was enjoying creating. I was doing well with it. I wasn't doing so well that I could not give it up. I just said you know what I want to be on the other side of the equation here. I left and launched a media company, which is where I got to go to fashion shows, attend them, review them and interact with the people on the other side of the backstage wall.
Nick Petrella:Did you have any experience prior to that?
R. Scott French:None whatsoever as an entrepreneurial person. As I get later on in my life, I realize that's what I am. I get bored after a while. Not bored as in oh, this is horrible. But there's something else that comes along that intrigues me.
R. Scott French:This is a time when the whole blogosphere and the whole internet was just really really taking hold. There were some magazines were moving to an online format. I thought, well, this whole world is intriguing. I have control of my own voice in a way, and I have control of what images I put out there. This whole world of social media and the internet was really intriguing to me. I thought, why not?
R. Scott French:Actually, I wrote a business plan. I literally just wrote this business plan. I thought I've never done that before either. When we wrote a business plan, I was working with my PR agent or my PR in-house PR person, meredith Garcia, who sat right behind me all day long. We wrote this business plan and I took it to this entrepreneur that I had gone to college with and he had just sold a company to Google I think it was Google, or some big company like that for an insane amount of money. I just said, hey, would you mind looking at it? Not only did he look at it. He called me on my phone and funded it. I was like oh my God.
R. Scott French:Now I'm like I got the money I need to now do this. It was just sort of a serendipitous thing that money landed in my lap and intrigued me. I went for it.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's great.
Andy Heise:Can you describe in general, at a high level, what public relations or PR is?
R. Scott French:Public relations I came to a little bit later as just a pure, really practicing of PR. However, public relations involves that whole media side of things. Generally, public relations is any voice that's beyond the creative process, but any voice that faces the general public is what we handle for our clients, whether that voice be an actual voice where we actually put it out there, like through a designer interview or through a client interview, or that voice be a branding message they put out there, a tagline, a label, the way a label is perceived or the way the sales take place in the showroom, or getting reported, a call and ask for us to be included in something. Those are all public, facing touch points for the brand with the public. A public relations agency not only handles all of that but also fosters more of that and guides that process to make sure that it's focused, good for the brand.
Andy Heise:Yeah, so working with the client, the brand, to develop what is that messaging and how do we, how do we find places to, to spread that brand messaging?
R. Scott French:Yeah, you'd be amazed at how many creative people don't know how to talk about what they do. It astounds me. It's like you can go to any. You can go to a nuclear physicist and say what do you do? They'll tell you exactly what they do down to them. You know an electron, okay. You ask a professor's there what they do and it's an hour long thing and they still don't really know what they do. I'm like it's pretty amazing to me. So we I think just the creative mind doesn't say package things and little Modules the way the public likes to just do, to consume them, and that's sort of what we help our clients do.
Nick Petrella:And do you do you think that is? Do you think that's the reason that they don't necessarily think about it, or why do you think that that is with ours?
R. Scott French:Don't really know what that reason is. I think it's just the way creative minds think. And I also will tell you I know everyone think, oh, I think different. Well, you know what most people don't? They pretty much think the same. But I found in myself the ability I had an ability to sort of run a business Track. Those numbers Understand the bottom line. I understand my accounting sheets. I have my checking account balance to the penny every single day, if not our. At the same time, I also the ability to make clothing and sketch and do these things I had.
R. Scott French:I did cross this bridge and I Don't understand why creative minds don't think that way, because I never have thought that way. I've always been very, very factual and literal and and Able to fantasize, but the same time able to bring that down and then communicate that through a product that actually sells. So I'm not really certain, but we talked to the creative minds many times. It's like what did you just say to me? You know, so I know, knowing that can listen to it and knowing what the other side needs to hear, I can distill that you know that gobbledygook, into something, into sound bites that you know the work or I can train the designers to sort of speak All right and, you know, put their things a little, capsules that make sense to the two others.
Nick Petrella:You're a translator.
R. Scott French:Yeah, in a way I am a translator, a brand translator, yeah yeah.
Nick Petrella:So what are some ways arts entrepreneurs can acquire and engage with audiences and and how can affirm like yours facilitate that on a higher level?
R. Scott French:It's a really good question because it's changing every every day, and especially of the last. Even the last, like five or six years, is even changed exponentially. Back in the day, and I talk about the day, meaning like that, you know, ten years ago, prior to social media and when the internet was still sort of the Wild West, you really you know, prior to all of that, you had magazines, newspapers and that was about it and whatever else the brand puts out there and they would communicate a message on the runway or you know, putting, putting an ad out there and, like you know, six months later the public would get to experience that, whether that be on television or in the magazine article, it ran about the trends coming off the runways in New York, whatever, in speaking fashion, from fashion standpoint now.
R. Scott French:It happens instantaneously. There's people at the shows with their phones up, literally live broadcasting it, where they're getting it out there before the design themselves has got it out there. So it's gone exponentially. The number of channels of distribution of a message have grown exponentially. So there's many different ways, whether it be a digital, which is in the immediate realm, whether it be digital which is like a week behind, which is like a blog posting or something of that sort, or whether it be traditional print. But then they've even gone one step further. There's now digital versions of print publications. It's like it's crazy. So any way that you want to get the message out there, there's a way of getting it out there.
R. Scott French:So oftentimes what we do is we help our designer, our entrepreneurs, decide where do you want to be seen. And I go back to a really interesting point. I got this publication one time L Magazine, which is one of the major, major fashion magazines. I got a client's sock in L Magazine in the opening page of the fashion spread and we're like, high-fiving around the office Look what we did. How amazing. This like $8 sock on the heel of a Dior shoe for $3,000. Like, this is amazing.
R. Scott French:We showed the client. They're like eh, like what do you mean? Eh, so we don't sell many socks and also we want to be a click through and buy that sock. I'm like, oh my God, that was a real eye-opener for me that we need to find out what's the best way that that particular entrepreneur or brand wants to be seen and don't bother putting them in places where they don't want to be seen that way. They want to click through, they want to e and electronic method of interacting versus that print method. So it was a real eye-opening lesson for me. So we need to help them, listen to them and help them understand, and help us understand what's best for them and then pursue that accordingly.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, did you ever track the sales on the impact of it?
R. Scott French:They were gone in about an hour and they were cursing me because they couldn't get more of them. But this particular website had like a 60% conversion rate on traffic, so they actually had saw an uptick in their other sales. But we had a lot of frustrated customers who couldn't get that sock. So was that good or bad? It was good for them because they ultimately didn't care about that L consumer, but it was not good for those consumers. But in the end everyone's happy.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, you brought up something I wanted to hear more about. So in the years my experience is in the music products industry for many years and I've seen a shift from 100% print towards digital. What's the breakdown? Digital to print media in fashion.
R. Scott French:In. When everything first began the shift, it was still everybody wanted that print publication, which was easy because it was like 90% print, 5% digital. Today I'm not exaggerating, I tell you it's probably completely slipped to the direction. If 5%, maybe even less, of our placements occur in a print medium, whether that be newsprint or magazine print, the balance of them are in the digital sphere and whether that be social or whether that be internet based, it's literally 95.5. The other direction now.
Andy Heise:And you work primarily with fashion designers, correct, primarily, we're with fashion designers.
R. Scott French:We do fashion accessories in men's and women's runway fashion. We do a couple clients in the product realm and some of them are CBD wellness realm we do work with, but the bulk of ours are fashion clients. However, we have had some artists. We had one artist that we represented for quite some time. Deanna first was her name and she was a fashion illustrator, so we got her. Yet she's had product to sell. I think we'll get into, hopefully in sales we'll sell things a little bit later, but we worked with her.
R. Scott French:But they're generally in the fashion realm or, in the case the CBD client we have, they wanna be promoted in any fashion way and what does that mean? They wanted this thing, not just another grocery store story or not just another story about, oh, buy our product, but here's the way why this product is lack of a term, sexy or why the colors are our product are appealing. So we approach it from a very different trend driven standpoint that the fashion industry is very good at marketing themselves that way and they wanted that type of modernity or a sexy sex appeal to their product that their committers don't have, which they've engaged us. We've done very well with it.
Andy Heise:Yeah, and that kind of that leads me to my question is how is the fashion industry different than maybe other industries? What sets it apart, what makes it distinctive? For, one.
R. Scott French:It's probably one of the most alluring creative industries out there. I don't really know what that is. I think it's just because everybody thinks that they Know how to dress better than the next person or everybody, who doesn't necessarily think they're better, but they know they have their own visual, their visual Aesthetic that they feel is is worthy of being celebrated. So everybody gets dressed every day and everybody eats every day. Okay, so I always say you're either in there in the food or the fashion business. You're gonna touch everybody every day. Even if they only wear a loincloth, it's still something that you know they wear. So therefore it's universal.
R. Scott French:And secondly, the fashion industry, for whatever reason is, everybody believes they can enter it and there's a very low barrier of entry. If you're gonna go out and make a new computer product, the tech, the barrier of entry, both fiscally and just Manufacturing wise and technology barrier is so insanely high that it just weeds out 99.9% of those entrepreneurs. That space right from the get-go Fashion. However, if you've got a sewing machine and a table, go, you can make something that someone can wear. Additionally, the industry has been advertised through TV shows like project runway or next in fashion, or there's another one making the cut, all these different. Amazon has one and you know a naked, netflix has one multiple TV shows. So it's shown people that, yeah, even you can do this. So it seems like you know the universal appeal, the low barrier of entry and then the mark the media Telling already they can do it has made it a very common Jumping in point for the creative entrepreneur.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that because I've coached people for different pitch competitions, college pitch competitions, and it seems as though 25% of the students who these aren't fashion students, you just you know could be any major. They want to start a clothing company, whether it's just silk, screening or something, and so it's just that appeal.
R. Scott French:It's very frustrating to me as well when I went with the case, because there really is a skill set to having a successful fashion brand in the just understanding the manufacturing process, the fitting process, and so many people entering that don't know what they're doing and then the consumer Buys these products and is disappointed in some way or they think that that's good.
R. Scott French:It has seriously diluted the quality of the overall Fashion business in many ways because so many people got into it and I'm not saying we should keep people out, we should keep people out that aren't going to properly, you know, execute the crafts if you will. And one thing that's very frustrating to me is why I see you know, you know name names, you know Kanye West or Reese Witherspoon or these people entering the business and Thinking they're a designer overnight. And I'm thinking, well, what about if I just showed up at a recording studio and says I want to rap right now or I want to go act on those back on the soundstage of Paramount? Well, am I? Would I be given the same opportunity for that? Absolutely not. Yet fashion is expected to welcome them with open arms. It's very frustrating.
Nick Petrella:If you pay it, I mean they charge studio by the hour.
R. Scott French:Perhaps I should do that Show up and to say how much is the soundstage. I'm doing a movie. But I think it is in the frustration. Here it's like we're expected as fashion entrepreneurs, so this will let everybody have a say, but we're not given the same you know say elsewhere in the creative world. So it's a bit frustrating. But also I guess I should take pride in the fact that we are such an alluring industry. Everybody wants to be a part of it, so that's that's nice to hear as well.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, sure, and you can probably craft your answers in your branding to to actually address that as a value add for the, the brands you do represent.
R. Scott French:Exactly yeah certainly.
Nick Petrella:So let's circle back and just want to unpack a little bit more A question we were talking about earlier. So many artists really any creatives they want to focus on doing their thing, whether it's painting, performing, designing and so on. At some point they will have to speak about their offerings, whether it's a podcast interview, speaking with someone in a trade show. Do you have any tips for them on how they can become more comfortable and competent at doing that?
R. Scott French:That's a really good question. We encourage all of our clients to do it, and if they can't figure out on their own, obviously they can't figure out on their own, or they wouldn't have hired us to do it for them.
R. Scott French:But, if they haven't gotten this real message down the path we figure out, what is it that matters? What is it that you still that matters to the consumer? In the end, they may not care about the thread count or the stitch or the way you did something. They care about the fact that this is why this is special. So what are those two or three conversation points? And what is it also that defines your brand DNA?
R. Scott French:I have one designer, gita Omri, who does a zero to 30 collection. We realized a few weeks ago that she loves these curvy lines like these, like sort of scrolly lines, and all of her prints and her patterns and her embroideries. I said, okay, let's embrace that, let's get behind that and utilize that and have that element somewhere in all of your things, whether it be on the edge of a button or the edge, and then communicate that. And so you've got to identify what is your essential brand design DNA, decide whether or not the consumer matters. Matters the consumer or not? And whether they care about it. And if they don't care about it and you keep on talking about it, there's going to be a disconnect there in the sales. So we now need to decide.
R. Scott French:If the sales aren't occurring. How do we pivot to get them to care and then bring in what matters to you? You've got to sometimes put the commerce ahead of what you want to do or what you want to talk about, and I tell them if you don't do that, it's not selling out, it's called selling. Drop the out, it's called selling. And if you don't sell, you're not going to be around too much longer. So if you want to continue doing what you're doing, you've got to figure out how to arrive at that balance. So, yes, they want to just do their own thing and create all the time, but if they can't communicate with the audience or they can't talk about their things comfortably, they're going to have a really hard time growing beyond just a hobby or beyond a moderately successful Etsy platform as their platform of commerce.
Nick Petrella:So do you have them jot down what the intrinsic value is, or their value propositions, and then you pull it out of them?
R. Scott French:Very often I listen to them talking. I hear what they consistently say to me, what they consistently want to talk about I seemingly want to talk about. And then as a good publicist person I'll say, ok, that's important to them. How can I surgically remove certain elements of that and bring that into the message where possible? Or I'll bring my message into what they're saying and say why don't you insert some of this? We insert some of that and we come over to a new brand conversation and they're amazed at times, like all of a sudden they say, oh my god, I've gotten three placements this month. I've never gotten that before.
R. Scott French:I'm like well, you're giving it to them in a method and in a way that they want to hear it and it makes it digestible. And not necessarily the media doesn't always want to hear it a certain way. They sometimes have to hear it a certain way. If the angle of that article is this and you're giving them this over here, the two are never going to cross. So sometimes you have to craft our message to meet the needs of the story and if you're not comfortable with that as a designer, then we just won't get that story. That's OK.
R. Scott French:But you can't always dictate the conversation to exactly the way you want to communicate it. Sometimes you've got to be a bit pliable, and that's difficult for a lot of creative minds to think that way. It's interesting. Creativity and fly is like oh yeah, anything's possible. But yeah, you talk about the random. You're like no, this is what I want to talk about. So we work with them. So it's up to us to strike a compromise and figure out how to tailor that message into something that both sides will benefit from.
Andy Heise:Sure, that's great. Yeah, well, in any publicity marketing that an artist might do, there's a line between what they can do themselves and then when things that professional support, like companies like yours, can provide for them. How does an artist or a designer know when it's time to seek professional help with their publicity and marketing messaging?
R. Scott French:When a designer realizes that they've missed five or six or two or even one opportunity because they just simply can't get to it. That's usually when I get the call. Like that's when they've grown up enough to say, oh my god, I'm missing all this opportunity. Or when they come to me very freshly why can't we get these situations Like well, you're not focusing on putting yourself in consideration for these opportunities. We work with the media. We pitch a client all the time. At least once a week a pitch goes out to a very wide swath of the media. We have all these software to track who opened what, what they clicked on, and we see that this.
R. Scott French:I sent one out this morning for someone. It went out to 2,200 media people For them to, for one, build that list for one to get those 2,200 people. They never will. If they're lucky they'll have 50 contacts. What they don't know is of those 50 people, five of them have left the last two months or moved around the last two months. Then they're just going to get to it late at night when they have to do all the creative things. They get to late at night and guess what? That editor's home already here. She's not paying attention to it late at night. So we went out to 2,200.
R. Scott French:This morning I immediately saw that 1,185 people opened that email. 55 clicks went through. They clicked on these five links. And now I know that these 50 people that clicked on this one link which is about 11 of them well, guess what? They're going to get from me A follow-up tomorrow with hey, by the way, I can't be creepy like I saw.
R. Scott French:You clicked on that link yesterday. No, but a random email will go to them just dropping that back in the conversation Like wait a minute, why am I seeing that again? If they had that happen two or three times, like, oh my god, this person's everywhere. I need to pay attention to them. A designer is just not a creative person. They're not going to do that. They're just not going to have the time to do that, because why they're focusing on what they should be talking on their craft and their product. So I always say it's not a matter of when they should. They should do it from the get go if they can, but when they feel that they have a product or a brand message or a creative message that's worthy of getting out there beyond their two bloggers they know, or their boyfriend or girlfriend. That is the editor at that magazine. It's time to give us a call, much sooner than not.
Nick Petrella:Sure. Do you think that art entrepreneurs should have blogs easing in the like? And why, or why not?
R. Scott French:Yes and no, as my answer that was yes, they should, no, they shouldn't. Here's why yes, they should if they can keep up with it, and that sort goes to the know if they can't keep up with it, it's a huge commitment. They say, oh yeah, I can, I can post once a week. That's good, but I think you should really do two or three times a week, and it seems you fish. I have many ideas. I have them. List them out. Here's my eight ideas. Like okay, that's a month.
R. Scott French:They look at me all puzzle and then each of those becomes it. When it becomes a burden, they just stop doing it because it's a burden. So if they have a lot to say and if they Want to take that on, then yes, but they can't do it. Well, you're better off not doing anything than not doing something well or pulsing, just saying you know, here's my nine Instagram polls for the season and put them all at once. Just let them sit there. Next season, do nine new ones and let them sit there. You've got to find a way to Present it in a way that they can do it, and if they can't do that, well, don't do it at all is a key. So I find that designers aren't nearly as interesting to the public as they they are, as they think they are. A very few of them really have the, the bandwidth and the and the the ability to be, you know, a good written Representation of themselves on a consistent, ongoing basis.
Nick Petrella:It's, it's difficult. I know we started one here and I write a blog. I do it every month. I mean, I started out and there's like, well, two months went by, three months and I said, alright, remember one New Year's resolution, I'm gonna do it every month. So I've been doing it. But it's, it's interesting. I keep coming back to what is it. Seth Godin says you know, write a blog every day, and this was a number of years ago. We said that, but that's hard. It's hard to keep up.
R. Scott French:It's very difficult. It's an hour and you know at least an hour to do something about, sort of get it posted. And if you're going to do that every day, could that hour not be better spent calling five stores or speaking to you know three customers or you know, or creating it your next, you know, best seller? That's the question. So if indeed your message is part of your craft, that might be a good thing. And going back, I hate to keep bringing this person up, but the illiterate I worked with, deanna first. She posts all the time because that's her Marketing campaign.
Nick Petrella:Oh, why?
R. Scott French:did she have that because she was at an event the night before sketching She'll. She'll post a picture. So when it's easy like that to post, go for it. But if you're designing in the studio, you're gonna be really focused on that to make that happen. So do it well or don't do it all. That's the way I conclude that one.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, to your point. I mean, nothing increases sales like selling. You know she's, she's been on here.
Andy Heise:Oh, she has a great. She's great yeah and just to follow up to that, you know and again this is sort of a Off-script question here, but you know a lot of designers or artists. They might have Personal and personal social media, but then they also might have their brand social media. And how, navigating that whole conversation to at what point is the individual, the brand, or should we keep it separate, should combine them, you know?
R. Scott French:Yeah, it's a good question. It's a balancing act. I do work with one designer who's a mother of two and I see she doesn't do a lot on her brand Instagram, for instance, but she was always posting pictures of her children on her Personal Instagram and unfortunately they're very similar in name, so people Cross over. So I think that it's really important. I would really keep my personal one, if you can. If you want to post personal pictures, keep it beyond password protected, keep it private, whatever, so that it doesn't confuse your message. Unless you are a Person has a professional team behind your social media program, where the world of the influencer, for instance, you know the whole brand influencers. They are their brand. Therefore, they put their own personal things up there because they're allowing that public a view into their lives in that manner. But even then, the influence that I work with I know quite a few of you, some humongous numbers. I know what they did this weekend and that's not what they did this weekend. What's on their thing?
Andy Heise:So they're not posting there.
R. Scott French:In real time they're clam baked with their, their family, long Island this weekend and you know they're in central pay this week at a quarter there. You know Instagram feed, so it's making sure that your brand is properly represented and If you're trying to sell your own really beautiful dresses, you're trying to sell an amazing, you know, artwork that.
R. Scott French:Highest that you know, grade school graduation photo may not Further that and might make you seem like you're not serious, because unfortunately sure, in the case of some people, the public doesn't believe the designers have a real life and they don't necessarily want to see that their lives are just like theirs. They want to show a glamorized version of it, so it might not. It might not serve them well.
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