UK fashion marketers are beginning to question whether reacting to hype in real time is actually worth it, indicating a shift in how UK fashion brands create relevance with customers.
New research from Klaviyo, the autonomous B2C CRM, reveals only 9% of UK fashion marketers believe chasing real-time trends actually works, signalling that the era of viral trend-hopping may be losing its grip on the industry.
Instead, fashion marketers are moving away from reactive marketing towards deeper customer relationships and brand building. Four in ten (40%) say personalised experiences and brand storytelling are now the strongest drivers of relevance.
Influencer partnerships also remain a crucial way to balance authenticity with relevance, as 69% say they play a fundamental role in building cultural credibility and staying connected to emerging trends.
“As trends shift quicker than ever, chasing viral moments without aligning them with your brand’s values isn’t sustainable, said Jamie Domenici, chief marketing officer at Klaviyo. “Instead, brands that lean into personalisation and authentic storytelling will stay relevant and connect best with shoppers during peak moments like London Fashion Week and throughout the year.”
Fashion brands use AI to move faster internally, but not to personalise customer experiences
AI is widely seen as the solution to moving faster and improving customer personalisation, but its use across the fashion sector remains inconsistent in the areas with most impact. Almost 80% of UK fashion marketers are using AI in some form within marketing operations, yet only a third (34%) are using AI to personalise customer experiences and just 22% are applying it to demand planning.
The gap is even more pronounced in customer experience: more than one in four UK fashion marketers (28%) have not implemented AI in CX at all.
This disconnect poses a growing risk. As consumers increasingly use AI-powered tools for shopping and brand discovery, fashion brands that fail to embed AI into personalisation and customer experience risk falling behind.
Using technology to maximise relevance
While AI adoption remains uneven, technology more broadly remains central to how fashion marketers respond to fast-paced change in the industry. In the UK, the most common ways that fashion marketers are using technology to stay relevant include:
- Updating collections in real time with flexible ecommerce platforms (41%)
- Identifying emerging conversations with social listening and trend monitoring tools (39%)
- Activating trusted voices quickly through influencer management platforms (37%)
- Surfacing real-time customer insights with data and analytics tools (34%)
Across EMEA, approaches vary by company size. Enterprise-scale fashion brands in EMEA rely mostly on AI powered content creation or optimisation tools to stay relevant (46%), while updating collections in real time using ecommerce platforms is most common amongst entrepreneurs (37%) and SMBs (42%).
“As viral moments come and go at lightning speed, relevance in the fashion industry will increasingly be defined by how successfully brands use technology to build personal, data-driven experiences,” said Ben Jackson, EMEA MD at Klaviyo. “AI gives brands the tools to anticipate shifts in customer behaviour and personalise engagement at scale, while staying true to their brand and delivering experiences customers genuinely value.”
