Ted Baker launches Clubhouse series, first fashion brand to get club status

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Mar 25, 2021

Ted Baker has become the first UK brand to launch a culture platform on Clubhouse with the debut this week of its branded content series.

The invitation-only audio-chat app facilitates content and communication for groups of up to 5,000 people and Ted Baker’s Wednesday evening debut saw it in a ‘room’ with 3,000 collective listeners that trended across the social networking app.

The fashion industry is increasingly active on Clubhouse, with many labels and designers taking part in existing rooms and building up their followers. But Ted Baker is the first fashion label to get club status. This is crucial as it allows it to “curate a brand community within the platform and partner with talent and industry insiders to run rooms under their branded club”.

Its debut six-part series is called Conversations in Culture and is hosted by Britain’s “largest and most notable Clubhouse content creator”, Abraxas Higgins, who has more than 370,000 followers on the app. 

Higgins is being joined each time for an hour-long conversation with “key cultural commentators to discuss intersections of British culture and fashion”. Each guest will invite members of their own network to share the stage and exchange perspectives on a given topic.  

The first conversation featured multidisciplinary artists Greta Bellamacina and Kojey Radical, talking about ’mixing media as an expression of British culture’. They’re the stars of the new campaign for its new MiB collection too. 

Ted Baker will also make the most of the Clubhouse link by republishing each session as a podcast series – Ted Baker Club Presents: Conversations in Culture – which can be streamed and downloaded via Apple Podcasts/ Spotify.

The firm’s Chief Customer Officer Jennifer Roebuck said: “We see Clubhouse as an opportunity to experiment with new and innovative digital formats and develop our cultural capital. As a British heritage brand, we intend to use our voice to be part of the cultural conversation alongside diverse and engaging talent from across our industry and beyond.” 

Meanwhile Higgins said: “The fashion industry has been seen as illusive for a long time but now more than ever people are looking to connect with brands. Those [brands] that can come on [to the app] and explain their philosophy to audiences (among other things) may be able to create fandom both inside and outside Clubhouse. Ted Baker is a British brand that I have been aware of my entire life and I believe our partnership is well placed to launch ‘Conversations in Culture’. I’m excited to see what the coming weeks will bring”. 

And he added that “since joining Clubhouse in mid-October, the application has changed so rapidly. For anyone looking from the outside it might not seem like much, but the real value is in the people you meet and the connections you end up making. Paul Davison (co-founder and CEO at Clubhouse) often says the app creates ‘intimacy at scale’. It will be interesting to see the brands that understand the new ecosystem and adapt”.