The Stylista is the social media space for fashion, beauty and lifestyle in South Africa, where users and brands are connecting and sharing. It’s the brainchild and creation of fashion industry aficionado, Tami Ruschin, and it’s delivering strong value for all the participants on the platforms.
Explains Ruschin, MD of The Stylista, “I was working in fashion when I identified a gap in the market for a place to bring the fashion industry together – the brands, their consumers, and others in between. That was the start of The Stylista, followed by a tremendous amount of research to identify the best ways to execute the vision.”
The result is a growing South African social media community, where fashion-conscious consumers, from the style novice to ultra fashionistas, post their daily outfits and showcase their personal styles, while also exploring what content brands are offering, what influencers are doing, and discovering the latest in fashion and lifestyle trends. This dynamic platform that positions itself as South Africa’s leading tastemaker destination’ features powerful content delivered by the Stylista team and supported by advertisers and sponsors.
“Content is king for driving following in social media – and our team creates authentic and useful content for all our stakeholders, enabling our users to post and interact with like-minded people, and the brands to engage with existing and potential customers,” says Ruschin. “We’re more than a media platform; we have the audience to substantiate the content that we produce for our users.”
At the heart of The Stylista’s success is motivational, educational, and useful content delivered through video production and sponsorship, editorial, influencer participation, ongoing research, strategy management, and advertising. “Our campaigns for our advertisers are customised, and no two campaigns are alike; we don’t even have a rate card. We gain an in-depth understanding of the business, of the client’s marketing strategies, and where necessary, we educate them on how digital works and its value in reaching their consumers. Our goal is to create an experience for the brand and the user, and as we develop campaigns, we create content and integrate influencers – it’s a hybrid solution and it’s working.”
Ruschin adds that this content marketing approach has longer-term benefits of brand buy-in by consumers and won’t generate results overnight. “Brands need to be committed to a timeframe of three to six months to see good return on investment. Strong and authentic content that is posted regularly will keep brands top of mind with consumers and in our experience, once-off campaigns or guerrilla tactics might be effective in the short term, but won’t drive business growth.”
Some of the big fashion names have seen better than expected responses to their respective campaigns on The Stylista include Rimmel, New Balance, Palladium, Charles & Keith, Converse, Edgars, L’Occitane, Diesel, and more.
The Stylista’s market is aged 18-35, urban millennials, 90% black African, 70% women, and 88% accessed on mobile. They are real people – trendsetters and style seekers – who have found a free platform to showcase their own personal styles, to be a source of influence amongst The Stylista community, and to set the pace for South African street style. Says Ruschin, “We now have a following of over 250 000 users who are continuously returning to the platform because of the voice and recognition they are given. The Stylista has proudly become a social network within the fashion community.”
Get connected: https://www.thestylista.co.za/ or download the app from the PlayStore and soon to be available from the iStore.
