GAP sets benchmark for mobile marketing

Since we have been discussing the possibilities of mobile marketing in our last e-marketing class, I was curious to see if there is a fashion company that makes use of this promising marketing tool. The company that I stumbled upon first was the Gap, which ended up being a pretty interesting story.

The fashion retailer launched a competition this summer asking people to come up with ideas about what GAP could be doing with the iPhone. The winner who was announced in August 2009 was a company called IntuApps whose ideas were later used for the development of an app called Gap StyleMixer. This is a short demo of the app IntuApps developed:



The final version of the social shopping app enables users to mix and matches clothes, find inspiration, get advice and more. StyleMixer can help the user to organize outfits that can be shared on Facebook to get feedback from friends. Users can even integrated clothes from their own closets. But the most revolutionary part of the app is the fact that the app unlocks special denim discounts when users are near a Gap store by using GPS technology.

And this is how the app and a discount look like:




I think Gap has done a great job in incorporating mobile technology into its e-marketing strategy. Gap fans can discover new trends and items and share it right away with their friends. However, many users have complained about the lack of items in this app. There is obviously no point in putting together outfits if there are not enough items to choose from. Especially with the store discount function, this app shows great potential for Gap. Nevertheless, the retailer has to make sure that a better selection of merchandise is included so that Gap fans can use it to its full extent.

Found via Mobile Marketer

From Couture to Conversation

In my last post I have been blogging about a study that rated the digital competence of 109 luxury brands, some of them being fashion companies. The fashion company with the third highest rating (rank #11) was Gucci and today I totally understand why.

Gucci introduced its latest line of eyewear with a viral ad campaign by launching a website called guccieyeweb.com. This site lets visitors upload their own party pictures of which some of them will be chosen by Gucci and displayed on the website as if they were reflections in the various new eyewear styles. And this is how it looks like:


Patrizio di Marco, Gucci’s president, sees this initiative as a "tactical web promotion." According to him, guccieyeweb.com is a component of an integrated marketing plan for the launch of Gucci’s new youth-oriented sunglass collection. As social networking is an important activity for this target demographic today, this component has been the heart of the marketing plan. He also elaborates on the fact that the investment in building and maintaining this site equals to a handful pages in a traditional marketing campaign. Given that this site can be reached internationally, this investment can be highly efficient.

This is another example how companies step away from traditional marketing communication to more conversational marketing. This campaign is entirely build on customer involvement and would not work without customers' willingness to share their personal pictures. I am not sure if this campaign will be a success. What I am sure though is that Gucci will be able to easily track the conversion rate as each site of guccieyeweb.com shows the direct link to the online shop.

I could not hold off myself to test this website and to upload some of my pictures. Let’s see if I get picked by Gucci… I’ll keep you posted!

Found via The New York Times

Digital IQ Rating of Luxury Brands

Trying to find the fashion companies who are doing a good job of exploiting e-commerce and social media opportunities, I have stumbled across a very interesting study done by NYU's Stern School of Business. This study rates the digital competence of 109 luxury brands in 11 categories grouped into four criteria:

1. Search Engine Optimization
2. Brand Translation
3. Leveraging the Medium
4. Social Media

The following table shows how fashion brands were ranked among other luxury brands:


Only Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren made it in the Top 10 of luxury brands that were rated in this study. I was not surprised that consumer electronics such as Apple (rank #1) are doing a better job in exploiting the Internet opportunities. But should automotive companies such as BMW (rank #2) and Audi (rank #4) perform better than fashion companies? Would we not expect fashion companies who are supposed to be the masters of image creation to rank higher?

The comment on Marc Jacobs online appearance: “no e-commerce capacity; site is little more than a digital runway show” was relatively brutal. I think that all the low ranked high-end fashion companies should definitely look into this study and try to benchmark and compare themselves with competitors inside and outside the fashion industry.

Marc Jacobs: Viral marketing in Fashion

Marc Jacobs is a highly successful American fashion designer. Being the head designer for Marc Jacobs and the diffusion line Marc by Marc Jacobs, the designer is currently the Creative Director of the French design house Louis Vuitton. Last year Marc Jacobs used social media smartly to launch a viral marketing campaign. He decided to name a bag after a fashion blogger called Bryanboy after the blogger made this amusing documentary about the designer:



Once the bag was lauched, ad for the ostrich bag was built around Bryanboy:


This step has not only helped Bryanboy to become a star, who is now being invited to almost every fashion show but more importantly helped Marc Jacobs to have a free avalanche of publicity in the world of fashion. I think it was a brilliant idea to choose a controversial fashion blogger who is often described as the "gay version of Paris Hilton." I can clearly see a trend where companies tend to choose their best and most influential customers to use them for their ad campaigns. In my post about American Apparel using Chictopia to find models we could see a similar strategy. Social media is really changing the marketing world!

Book Report: Do It Wrong Quickly – How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules

Mike Moran’s book ‘Do It Wrong Quickly’ is not just another book about Internet marketing. The title of the book might lead the reader to think initially this book is about mistakes that can be done in Internet marketing. However, the book describes how companies should not get caught up in having to do it right the first time. Rather than trying to do it right the first time and spending significant amounts of money on planning, Moran suggests doing small and quick experiments because doing something wrong quickly is far better than doing something right slowly.

Compared to other E-marketing books, Moran’s approach to Internet marketing is pioneering and simple at the same time. Instead of creating an annual marketing plan, Moran suggests to do quick experiments. In order to decide whether an experiment was successful or not, the company has to make sure that accurate measurement is set in place. If the metrics show that this approach was wrong, the book clarifies that this is not a disaster, as something new can be tested very quickly the next day. By experimenting on a daily basis, a company can gradually fine-tune its marketing to have the highest possible outcome. This approach might change the entire world of an E-marketer, who is used to plan ahead of time in order to make it right the first time. This implies a flexible and open company culture. If this is not the case, e-marketers might have to overcome obstacles to persuade their leaders to ‘do things wrong quickly’.

Do It Wrong Quickly: Applying The Three R's to a Fashion Retailer

Moran also introduces the notion of the Three R’s of online marketing in his book, as an extension of the traditional Four P’s. As customers are nowadays overwhelmed with marketing massages, companies have to make sure that they are relevant, real and responsive. Although the Three R’s are not really new to Internet marketing, Moran provides new a perspective on it by suggesting achieving the Three R’s with quick experiments. What does this mean for example for a medium-sized fashion retailer?

First of all, the company has to be relevant to the target customer. Because customers choose relevant web sites through search engines such as Google, a fashion retailer has to make sure that target customers find their web site. Therefore, the company should test how it can be found through search engines. If the company does not come up on the first page of Google when using relevant key words, the company should consider building in the right key words into their web site or alternatively using paid search. After changes have been implemented, the company has to measure if the traffic on the web site has increased. If not, the paid search did not pay off or the key words were incorrect, and the company has to adjust it accordingly.

In order to convince consumers to become your customer, the retailer needs to be real. This is particularly important as Web 2.0 customers are highly informed and will call the company on every little lie. By telling the truth, trust and long-term relationships can be built. When applying ‘being real’ to a fashion company this can also mean talking to your customers like to real people, so that they’ll talk back. Many fashion companies (i.e. http://www.aritzia.com/blog or http://www.vagabond.com/blog/) that write company blogs are using a more ‘spoken language’ rather than a facts driven language. Aritzia's blog for example sounds usually more conversational:


This makes the marketing message more personal, so that customers are more likely to answer to it, which leads us to the third R. Once a customer gives feedback, the company has to be prepared to be responsive no matter if the feedback is positive or negative. It is especially dangerous if customer complaints are not answered quickly, as these will spread online very fast. Consequently, a fashion retailer has to make sure that all comments on the blogs, especially if these are requests or even complaints, are dealt with immediately. If the retailer is able to get the three R’s right, the company will be able to develop long-term relationships with its customers.

Do It Wrong Quickly: Converting Consumers to Customers

The last point in Moran’s book that I want to elaborate on is conversion because this was one of the key takeaways for me from this book.

Why are companies doing Internet marketing at all? They want to convert potential customers into real, actual customers. As a result, Internet marketing is not only about increasing brand awareness, it is about getting new customers and retaining current customers to increase offline and/or online sales. This again shows how important result measurement is. Moran gives the reader a great framework for tying offline sales to the web. One way to track online conversion is to offer discount coupons on the web site asking customers to bring a printout to the store. H&M is using this method several times throughout the year in most of its markets. Here is one example: