La Galerie d’Instagram will showcase a small collection of the best photos pulled from the Instagram community, for festival-goers to enjoy from June 15-21. Those who tag (up to three of) their shots by June 13 with #instagramcannes could be included in the exhibition. Winners will be selected based on the “originality, technical execution, and subject matter” of their submission.
“Both Instagram and Cannes Lions celebrate the world’s best visual imagery, so we’re planning to bring that connection to life at the festival,” it said Instagram in a blogpost.
Cannes Lions is an annual gathering honouring the best work in advertising and visual communications. As reported last year, it’s slowly becoming a space for the fashion industry to both be seen and recognised in too.
That’s looking set to also be the case this year, with speakers on the agenda including Melisa Goldie, CCO of Calvin Klein; Raphael Elicha founder of The Kooples; actress Sarah Jessica Parker with Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles ; and supermodel Gisele Bündchen.
Highlight names otherwise include Ralph Fiennes, Sheryl Sandberg, Aaron Sorkin, Sir Patrick Stewart, Spike Jonze, Sir John Hegarty and more.
Alexander Wang has been spreading summer cheer in Hong Kong with a black ice cream truck stationed outside its Harbour City store for the past two weekends. The branded van has been handing out free ice cream to customers and passers-by.
The ‘Eat Me’ campaign, developed in collaboration with HK boutique, Joyce, was launched to celebrate the two year anniversary of Alexander Wang Harbour City. Those who commemorated their ‘Eat Me’ moment on Instagram using the hashtags #joycehk and #alexanderwanghk had the chance to win an Alexander Wang gift.
Sure enough, the initiative drew quite a crowd – people of all ages were captured queuing up for the chance to enjoy ice cream out of the branded ice cream cones. The result was Instagram buzz from young and old alike, with winners of the competition receiving prizes such as a yoga matt and a domino set.
British contemporary brand, Whistles, has launched a short video directed by Garance Doré to celebrate its further expansion into the US and France.
Called #bellesandwhistles, the spot features a cast of “modern, sharp and stylish” women living in the US, UK and France. Among them are Yasmin Sewell, a London-based fashion consultant; Elle Strauss, fashion director of Shopbop and Brit living in New York; Vashtie Kola, an American artist and DJ; Jeanann Williams, an American stylist; French actress Rebecca Dayan; and French DJ and creative consultant Cecile Togni.
They are each seen clapping, dancing and whistling along to the tune, as overlaid copy reads: “The Whistles woman is independent, quietly brilliant, relaxed, discerning, elegant, intelligent, sharp, stylish.”
Jane Shepherdson, chief executive of Whistles, referred to the campaign as a digital first for the brand. “We see a great synergy between the aesthetic of both Whistles and Garance, which has been brought to life in the #bellesandwhistles film. To have such inspiring women working on and in the film is representative of the brand’s DNA, it’s like working with friends who understand you.”
The video launched on the Garance Doré website today, May 19, while shorter versions are also being posted to Instagram with the #bellesandwhistles hashtag. Consumer are simultaneously being invited to submit their own ‘whistling’ clips on the platform for a chance to win a shopping spree in the store.
Whistles is opening its first brick-and-mortar presence in the US, with a concession at Bloomingdale’s in New York. It is also supplementing its already established concession at Le Printemps, with Le BHV Marais this month and will roll out a French language website this summer.
Most of you will have already heard of the hashtag #ootd. For those who haven’t, this is the epitome of the #selfie phenomenon. “Outfit of the day” as it stands for, has over 23 million posts attached to it on Instagram.
That’s 23 million images associated with what people are wearing, said Will Young, director of Zappos Labs – the San Francisco-based experimentation and innovation arm of e-commerce site Zappos – during SXSW last week. “We looked at [those figures] and asked as a retailer how do we be a part of that?”
The answer? His team recently launched a pilot project on the platform called Next OOTD. Very simply, followers are invited to post a selfie along with the hashtag #nextootd. Those who do will receive a personalised shopping recommendation based on their Instagram from Zappos in return.
Zappos is of course a company that prides itself, and has become known, for customer service (its longest ever phone call was nine and a half hours – and celebrated for that fact, Young revealed). He said they are constantly trying to think of lots of different ways to take that service to the next level.
At the moment this project is entirely manual – there’s one person doing it who doesn’t even work weekends – so the potential to scale isn’t really there, he admitted, but that’s not to say it won’t be down the line.
“Personal shopping via Instagram… that could be the future of our business,” he argued – and perhaps rightly so given the buzz around social shopping once again at present. “It could have a 50 person team manning it and making personalised shopping recommendations.”
To his own strategy, he added: “I heard Sarah Friar, CFO of Square speak recently, and she said: ‘Think big but start small.’ That’s kind of how we approach things at Zappos Labs.”
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