Versace for H&M campaign video

In celebration of today’s Versace for H&M collection launch in Europe and Asia, here’s the campaign video for those who haven’t yet seen it.

As Donatella concludes: “My house, my rules, my pleasure”:

 

Making of: John Lewis 2011 Christmas ad

Looks like John Lewis has done it again – a Christmas TV ad that tugs on the heartstrings and becomes an instant viral hit.

Created by Adam & Eve, “The Long Wait” tells the story of a young boy impatiently counting down to Christmas. It launched in the UK on Friday (November 11), and has already racked up over 1m views on Facebook. It follows in the footsteps of last year’s For those who care about showing they care, featuring Ellie Goulding’s version of Your Song.

Here’s a look at how the £5m spot was made, with thoughts from John Lewis’ Craig Inglis, director of marketing, and Lloyd Page, head of brand marketing, as well as Adam & Eve creative director Ben Priest, alongside John Long and Matt Gay from the creative team:

 

And watch the ad itself, below:

Behind-the-scenes with the new Chanel tote bag and Stella Tennant

A nice bitesize piece of content from Chanel here – model Stella Tennant starring in a 30 second short centred around the brand’s new summer 2012 tote bag (available in February). Karl Lagerfeld can of course be heard directing in the background:

The fashion brands already on Google+

H&M on Google+

So we all know Google+ launched its brand pages this week. And we all know there’s a ton of commentary flying around as to whether companies should actually get involved or not.

But while we’ve been talking about it; others have been doing it, the fashion industry included.

According to Google’s blogpost announcing ‘Pages’ officially, Burberry, H&M and Macy’s were the first fashion partners.

In little over 24 hours however, numerous more have jumped on board. It’s a case of the usual suspects, and many of them don’t have any content on as yet, but here’s a list of some of them so far in anycase:

• ASOS
• Bergdorf Goodman
• Burberry
• Debenhams
• H&M
• Harrods
• Kate Spade
• Macy’s
• Marks & Spencer
• Net-a-Porter
• Saks Fifth Avenue
• Topshop Topman
• Uniqlo

Be sure to note how dynamic the Burberry and Kate Spade pages look with the animated gifs they’ve added, and check out the pictures below for some of the first posts:

Burberry's Christopher Bailey gave a video introduction to Google+ (click to watch)

ASOS jokes about how quiet things are on Google+

Macy's introduces its new Google+ page

Kate Spade uploads a new profile picture to its Google+ page

Uniqlo welcomes everyone to its new Google+ page

 

Have you found more? Please add them to the comments below…

 

Digital snippets: Google+, Yoox, Victoria Beckham, Cartier, DKNY, M&S, Groupon

Some more great stories from around the web surrounding all things fashion and digital over the past week:

• Google+ launches brand pages, Burberry, Macy’s and H&M first of fashion industry involved [Google Blog]

• Profile: Federico Marchetti, founder of Yoox Group [Financial Review]

• Victoria Beckham partners with Net-a-Porter to launch exclusive capsule dress collection (as pictured) [Vogue.co.uk]

• Cartier gets digital [WWD] 

• DKNY moves “Notes On A City” to Tumblr, expands brand content [FashionablyMarketing.Me]

• M&S adds social component to online video channel to push new Christmas TV ad [New Media Age]

• Groupon valued at nearly $13bn after IPO [Brand Republic]

• Amazon’s Endless.com launch iPhone app [Techcrunch]

Kenzo teases new collection with animated video

I love this new animated video from Kenzo:

 

Directed by Jo Ratcliffe and produced by Ryan Goodwin-Smith at Passion Pictures, it acts as a teaser for the brand’s first collection under new creative directors Humberto Leon and Carol Lim of Opening Ceremony. Bright, quirky and fun, it’s incredibly on-brand.

The music is by Rob Coudert, and animation by Rob Ward and Suzanne Deakin.

It also appeared in The Business of Fashion’s recent Top 10 fashion films of the season.

Chanel offers activity area for kids on exhibition microsite

Hidden alongside the more sophisticated pages of the Culture Chanel microsite – an online accompaniment to the Parisian brand’s current Beijing exhibition – is an interactive area called Kids’ Corner.

Within it sit two classic offline activities for children, translated for the web.

First up is a virual colouring book, which provides users with drawings of seven iconic Chanel items including a tweed jacket, brooch and clutch, and a choice of 36 different shades with which to fill them in with. Each picture is also available to download for printing.

And then there’s a memory game based on flipping over and matching up pairs of cards. Unsurprisingly, the face of each one features another series of classic Chanel symbols such as buttons and a bottle of Chanel No.5 fragrance. The back of each card is stamped with the interlocking Chanel C’s.

As Fashionista said, “we guess [it] is technically for children, but we like it too”, and that’s the interesting part. As gaming has opened up to a far wider audience (71% of females aged 20-49 now play games, according to IGN Entertainment), there’s been an increasing move towards the idea of game mechanics within campaigns, and I believe there’s enormous potential for further application within the fashion industry.

More thoughts to follow, but this piece from a few months back is worth re-reading in the meantime: Gaming as fashion’s jackpot.

Topshop sees 8% of online sales from mobile

There’s an interesting Q&A with Kate Walmsley, head of e-commerce at Topshop over at New Media Age this week.

In it she outlines the fact 8% of online sales are now coming from mobile, despite the fact the brand doesn’t yet have an optimised site, nor a transactional app (both are soon to launch). This figure is particularly significant when compared to other UK retailers;  according to retail trade body IMRG, on average 3-4% of total e-commerce sales from mobile among its membership.

“Something like 8% of online sales are coming through mobile, if you include iPad in there, which is three or four times more than it was last year. It is pretty strong growth and recognises that it is a really important channel for us,” said Walmsley.

She also explains how she sees mobile as an opportunity to bring everything the brand does together.

“We think we have a good online proposition and get a lot of engagement and interest among a wide base, who are enthusiastic and passionate about the brand. We want to connect that to the in-store experience, which is also really distinct and unique.

“A lot of people talk about really having a multichannel business, which is really important for us, but mobile is really the first real step towards that for us. It is not just about being in every channel or being able to transact in every channel but finding what the best experience for that channel and finding the best routes in.”

Her thoughts on f-commerce are also interesting: “Facebook is a likely place to be for us as we have a lot of folks there engaged with our brand. It makes sense for us to export it as a possibility but we don’t see the value in porting everything we do on .com and porting it over to Facebook. Then it is just replicating the experience and it ends up being clunky and not something that takes advantage of that environment. We’d rather do something that is a curated shop within that environment that is seasonal or event driven.”

Watch this space then.

International Vogue editors pose for Japan

Not in any shape or form a digital story, but I thought I’d post this picture of the Vogue editors from all around the world posing together for the very first time.

Led by American Vogue’s Anna Wintour, the editors represent the 18 countries where Vogue is published. The group joined forces for Tokyo’s Fashion’s Night Out in in a bid to boost spirits and sales following the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan earlier this year.

The industry’s most powerful women, despite their printed form…

Photo by Frederic Aranda

Editors positions (left to right): Yolanda Sacristan – Spain (seated), Kirstie Clements- Australia (middle), Anaita Adajania – India (back), Christiane Arp – Germany (seated), Angelica Cheung -China (standing), Franca Sozzani- Italy (seated), Mitsuko Watanabe – Japan (standing), Anna Wintour- America (seated), Emmanuelle Alt – France (reclining), Alexandra Shulman – Britain (seated), Victoria Davydova – Russia (standing), Anna Harvey-representing Brazil and Greece (seated), Seda Domanic – Turkey (seated), Myung Hee Lee – Korea (seated), Rosalie Huang -Taiwan (standing), Eva Hughes – Mexico and Latin America (standing), Paula Mateus – Portugal (seated)

Oscar de la Renta launches exclusive fragrance ring via f-commerce

Oscar de la Renta has turned to f-commerce with the launch of a limited edition cocktail ring featuring a solid concentration of its Esprit d’Oscar fragrance, available exclusively for Facebook fans from today.

Thanks to technology provided by social commerce company 8thBridge, the initiative allows users to shop the product end to end, therefore without leaving their Facebook feed.  (All you have to do is “like” ODLR to access the offer).

According to Erika Bearman, vice president of communications, aka Oscar PR Girl, this marks the beginning of a number of f-commerce exclusives that will follow from the brand, each one designed with its fans in mind.

It also demonstrates Oscar’s continuing dedication to social media, and belief that when it comes to sales, its various platforms (Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook) are particularly suited to its fragrance business. The company won back its fragrance licence just last year, and launched Esprit d’Oscar via a Facebook campaign in April 2011.