Scandinavian clothing brands—such as COS, Ganni, and NA-KD—have become staples in every fashionista’s wardrobe worldwide. These savvy Nordic brands have rapidly expanded into new markets and become well-known among fashion-forward consumers, both at home and abroad.
So, what’s the secret to the successful brand growth and expansion of Scandi fashion brands? How have they boosted brand awareness among new audiences and made their way into wardrobes in the US, UK and other international markets? The answer comes down to leveraging the right Voices—Media, Celebrities, Influencers, Partners and Owned Media—which are crucial for successful brand performance.
To better understand the successful strategies leveraged by Scandinavian clothing brands, we’ve analyzed marketing data using our industry-standardized metric—Media Impact Value® (MIV®)—to assign a monetary value to every post, interaction or article. This allows brands to accurately measure the impact of these elements and identify their contributions to brand performance across different Voices, channels and regions.
In this article you’ll learn…
How Scandinavian Clothing Brands Leverage Voices for Brand Growth
Working with a Voice-centric approach empowers brands to address different goals along the marketing funnel strategically. While Celebrities and Top-Tier Influencers are effective Voices for amplifying your brand, leveraging retail Partners and lower-to-mid-tier Influencers can help you establish authority. And when it comes to building awareness in the market and educating shoppers about your products, Owned Media channels are key.
After looking into each brand's Voice Mix—a detailed breakdown that identifies the different types of Voices that contribute to a brand's visibility and influence—we found that all three Scandi brands in our study (NA-KD, COS and Ganni) benefited largely from their Influencer collaborations in the first half of 2024. This, of course, comes as no surprise, as 69% of consumers state that they trust Influencer recommendations.
But, how exactly did these brands tap into the power of the Influencer Voice? What other Voices stand out in their strategy and how have these Voices aided them in market expansion?
NA-KD: How to Leverage Influencers to Expand Your Brand
NA-KD is a Swedish online-first fashion company founded in 2015. The brand is a go-to destination for fashion-forward consumers around the world, focusing on trendy styles, community building and social media engagement.
Having started as an online-only brand nine years ago, NA-KD’s marketing strategy is heavily digital, with a strategic approach centered around Influencer collaborations. NA-KD partners with a range of Influencers across the globe, including Micro-Influencers (under 100K followers), Mid-Tier Influencers (100K-500K followers), Macro-Influencers (500K-2M followers), and even All-Star Influencers (over 2M followers).
When diving into our Insights tool, we were able to see which tier of Influencers were generating the most MIV for all three Scandi brands. For NA-KD, 50% of their Influencer-generated MIV came from Mid-Tier Influencers, followed by Mega Influencers at 31%, Micro-Influencers at 14% and All-Star Influencers at 5%. By crafting a diverse Influencer strategy and tapping ambassadors in multiple markets, NA-KD can tackle several objectives and grow its brand on an international scale.
Connecting With Audiences Abroad
NA-KD’s top Influencer Voice for the first half of 2024 was Laura Jade Stone, a Macro-tier Influencer and Australian content creator based in London. In April, she collaborated with the brand to create the Laura Jade Stone x NA-KD collection, and through just one subtle sneak peek Instagram post, she generated $52K in MIV for the brand. Since the beginning of 2024, Laura has featured the Scandi brand in 22 placements, equating to $835K in MIV. By working with Laura, NA-KD has effectively targeted UK and Australian audiences who connect with her content.
Since January 2024, NA-KD has garnered $6.6M MIV just in the UK and another $954K MIV in Australia. Laura generated 12% of the UK’s total MIV within S1, highlighting how impactful working with Influencers can be. By nurturing relationships with trusted Voices in the specific regions that you are targeting, you can expand your brand into new markets and drive brand growth.
COS: Why Crafting a Diverse Voice Strategy Is Key
COS, a Swedish brand known for its timeless designs and part of the H&M group headquartered in Sweden, also leverages Influencers for brand amplification and expansion into new markets. This Voice garnered COS over half of their total MIV from in S1 2024—56% of their Voice Mix, to be exact, equalling $71M in MIV. Yet, when benchmarketing all three Scandi brands, we can see that COS also leads in terms of MIV generated from Celebrity collaborations and has also hugely benefited from the Media Voice.
When digging into the data in our AI-driven platform, we can see that COS has leveraged various tactics to boost its positioning in new markets.
In March, COS debuted its SS24 ready-to-wear collection at a Fashion Show in Rome, establishing itself as a key player in the fashion landscape. In order to amplify their Fashion Show presence on a global scale, they partnered with Celebrities—notably from the APAC region—such as Chayanit Chansangavej and Pruk Panich. During the Show, they each posted three times, with Pruk garnering $1.2M in MIV for the brand and Chayanit generating $214K. Overall, the pair generated 82% of the total MIV in Thailand for the show.
COS’s long-term relationship with Thai actor Pruk Panich generated over $3.6M in MIV since the beginning of 2024, 52% of the total MIV generated in Thailand. In total, 10% of the brand's total Voice Mix comes from this Voice type, generating $13M in MIV through 359 placements from January 2024 to the end of May 2024.
While COS’s Celebrity Voice strategy made a huge impact in APAC, we’ve also noticed significant growth in the UK, which has seen 275% MIV growth since 2023. There was also a notable spike in MIV in the US, representing a 300% spike since 2023.
Part of this MIV growth that COS witnessed was due to leveraging Influencers such as Trinny Woodall, a British beauty entrepreneur and businesswoman who has garnered over $1.32M in MIV for the brand through 63 placements. Trinny's top post was a YouTube video that featured three COS products, generating $46K in MIV. Her top 9 placements came from her 'Closet Confessions' series on YouTube, where she deep dives into a particular section of her closet. Trinny highlights products she genuinely uses and recommends, showcasing what she purchases herself and introducing COS to her British audience in a truly authentic way.
By adopting an Influencer-focused strategy across these regions, COS was able to target new audiences and boost their brand expansion while maintaining their brand identity and essence. COS ensured the Influencers they partnered with aligned with their brand's ethos and time-transcending style.
Ganni: How to Harness the Power of Media
Ganni is a Danish fashion brand founded in Copenhagen in 2000. They are known for their sustainable womenswear pieces, which feature bold designs and unconventional silhouettes, often incorporating vibrant colors and prints.
This Nordic brand also recognizes and taps into the power of Influencers. When looking at Ganni’s Voice Mix, we can see that Influencers garnered 40% of MIV, totaling $30M in MIV in S1 of this year. However, unlike COS and NA-KD, the Voice type that generated the most impact for Ganni during this time period was Media, with $36.7M in MIV across 12K placements. Their top Media post was from Time Out London on Instagram, which gained $316K in MIV for the brand.
Leveraging the Media Voice has been a key strategy for Ganni’s international expansion. The Nordic brand witnessed incredible MIV growth across different regions when compared to 2023 thanks to media coverage across major outlets. In the US, Ganni experienced a 24% MIV growth compared to 2023, with $2M being generated through 310 Vogue placements and $1.9M through 324 Who What Wear placements.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Ganni saw an 184% spike in MIV year on year after Vogue Germany garnered $1.4M in MIV across 238 placements, and InStyle Germany generated $1.2M through 136 placements.
Media impact has also grown for Ganni in the UK and France, with the UK seeing 58% MIV growth and France seeing 33% growth since January 2023. Ganni benefited from placements in Vogue France which featured the brand in 146 placements and generated $851K in MIV.
This perfectly represents that even though the Influencer and Celebrity Voices are rapidly growing, there’s still a huge impact to be made through the more traditional Media Voice, especially when it comes to expanding your brand in new regions.
Key Strategic Takeaways
- Scandinavian brands carefully tailor their Influencer partnerships to align with their brand ethics and identity, create authentic promotional content and introduce the brand to new target markets.
- Collaborating with Influencers of all different follower sizes is a powerful tactic. This allows brands to leverage the broader reach of All-Star and Macro Influencers to boost brand awareness while also working with Mid-Tier and Micro Influencers to target niche communities and build trust among audiences with high engagement.
- Leveraging different Voice types can be critical to reaching your new target markets, and the Media Voice can be a powerful ally for global expansion goals.
- Having data-backed insights is essential when devising a Voice-centric strategy for your brand so you can identify where you’re driving the most impact and optimize your budget to boost results.
Leverage Insights to Inform Your Market Expansion Strategy
Understanding the data behind your brand's success is essential to creating marketing strategies that target new markets and resonate with new audiences. Scandinavian clothing brands are an excellent example of how to leverage the different Voices to expand into markets abroad. When deciding which Voice to allocate budget to, it’s vital to analyze current and past data, and benchmark against your competitors to ensure a robust marketing strategy.
Using a tool such as Launchmetrics Insights allows brands to take more control over their marketing strategies by arming them with the data to make confident and considered marketing decisions, taking the guesswork out for Voice strategies.
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By Launchmetrics Content Team
The Launchmetrics content team is always on the lookout for new trends in the fashion and technology sector. We are geeks with style and lovers of good stories!
