River Island has partnered with augmented reality company Blippar to offer shoppers interactive content around its new Rihanna collection.
The initiative sees A5 flyers in store loaded with rich media content including exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, latest news from River Island and access to the website to buy the collection itself. Consumers can activate the content by using the Blippar app on their smartphones; pointing their camera at the images.
They can also share their favourite items from the collection on Facebook and Twitter, as well as save them to their image library.
Stephen Shaw, opportunities director at Blippar said: “The most eye-catching and successful Blippar campaigns always feature the most engaging content – and the Blippar team have been excited to work with such amazing electric photography and exclusive video content; when you add superstar models such as Jourdan Dunn into the mix we’re confident River Island customers will be blown-away by the whole campaign.”
As Retail Week pointed out however, River Island’s lack of a mobile-optimised website leads to a poor user experience for those directed, somewhat belittling the benefits of such an initiative.
It’s been a little while since one of these round-up posts on other interesting fashion and digital stories sourced from around the web, so there’s far more than usual. Each of them is however, of course, as interesting and relevant as ever…
Alexander Wang teams up with Samsung for crowdsourced handbag (as above) [Mashable]
Google reportedly in talks with Warby Parker to design stylish Google Glass frames [Techcrunch]
Gucci ups mobile conversion 70% via optimised site [Luxury Daily]
eBay is hosting a “social shopping” pop-up in London over the weekend to tie in with what it predicts to be its busiest online shopping day of the year in the UK. Over six million people are expected to log on to its site this Sunday, and a significant number of those are likely to come from mobile, it says.
No surprise then, the Covent Garden setup is built around how to make the most of eBay using your smartphone or tablet, recognising at the same time how important social media is in that space too.
I just went along to check it out, as the pictures above and below show. On display is a real-time barometer of the most talked about gifts and products over Twitter, an augmented reality experience highlighting this year’s must-have toys (note the Furby in the below shot), an example of its image recognition technology in action, and more.
That latter one sees a number of fashion bloggers pictured on the wall alongside a fabric swatch they’ve picked out. Each one can be scanned using the eBay fashion app to bring up similar colours and items available across the site. We trialled our scarves to double check they weren’t preloaded results – it did of course work wonderful.
eBay says mobile technologies such as this, as well as augmented reality and 3D, will present the UK retail industry with a potential boost of £2.4bn by 2014.
Carrie Bienkowski, head of buyer experience at eBay, said it’s changing the way we shop. “Consumers now carry a global showroom in their pocket and are increasingly as inclined to seek recommendations online and shop mobile as visit the high street. At eBay we expect 2012 to be our most successful mobile Christmas ever with around 30% of the most popular Christmas products being bought through a smartphone.”
eBay’s social shopping pop-up space is open from today until Sunday – if you’re in the area, check it out.
Farfetch.com’s augmented reality gift wrap by (left to right) Meadham Kirchhoff, Melinda Gibson, Margot Bowman and Gary Card
Online marketplace Farfetch.com is launching augmented reality gift wrap for the holiday season using image recognition technology from Aurasma.
Based on exclusive illustrations from four emerging creatives, the wrapping paper can be scanned using the Aurasma app on smartphone or tablet devices to reveal behind-the-scenes videos of the respective design process.
These fly-on-the-wall films document the gift wrap from sketchpad to sign-off, alongside interviews with each of the four creatives: design duo Meadham Kirchhoff (film shown below), photographer Melinda Gibson, artist and DJ Margot Bowman, and set designer and illustrator Gary Card.
The designs will be printed on 40,000 reams of wrapping paper and dispatched with all Farfetch orders from now until December 19.
CEO and founder of Farfetch.com, Jose Neves, said: “We are delighted to be collaborating with four dynamic names from the worlds of art and design, bringing these one-off creations to our online platform and sharing with a worldwide, fashion-forward audience. The campaign as a whole will offer users and customers exclusive access to the entire ‘Unwrap’ journey, creating what we hope will be an unrivalled online shopping experience.”
That ‘Unwrap’ concept will also see each design featured as wallpaper on the site (as with Meadham Kirchoff below) for a week, and a social Pass the Parcel game. Here, consumers are invited to click to win daily designer gifts and then share the parcel with their friends to gain more entries into the grand prize draw. The game also includes a world map that features a live feed of players around the globe.
In another phyiscal translation of the campaign, the Meadham Kirchoff print is also wrapping two London taxis (also shown below) from November 26 for a week. Passengers jumping in for a ride will receive festive cakes from food blogger April Carter of Rhubarb & Rose, and another chance to win designer gifts from Farfetch.com.
