If you need inspiration about expanding the way you use social Medias and develop your brand online, you should pay close attention to the concept of “Branded Content” and especially how the fashion industry is using it. Not only fashion for that sake but artists in general.

I remember back in the 80`s when Peter Gabriel started to produce CD-ROMs with music, art and photography in a beautiful harmony. I believe he was one of the early innovators of Branded Content.

The innovators today are designers, fashion houses and artists. Mashable has a good article about “7 Stellar Examples of Branded Content from the Fashion Industry”. Big names here are Louis Vuitton and their Nowness webpage. Others like Stella McCartney is also on the edge and using a lot of digital content to create the brand and story. She uses the Web, social medias and have a very nice iPad app to tell the story about Stella`s World.

It seams like some of the new platforms like the tablet (iPad) has boosted the possibilities for branded content and many artists has embraced this.

One could argue that this is easy for an artist but difficult for a traditional product but you have different examples of more tangible products (although fashion cloths are very tangible), especially on the high-end side that has used this strategy successfully.

One example is the Swiss watch maker Jaeger-LeCoultre who developed a couple of great iPad apps that places their product in the category extreme watches and showing their history through pictures, history telling, videos and small games.

Even if you do not think this would be possible for your product, do not underestimate the value of storytelling, you should at least pay close attention to how many of the high-end manufactures and artists are using branded Content.

I believe that on a certain level this is possible to most products – and that it would increase the value of your brand.