Digital snippets: adidas, Louis Vuitton, Neiman Marcus, Bitcoin, American Apparel

Here’s a highlight of the best stories in the fashion and tech space over the past couple of weeks…

• adidas launches Stan Smith pop-up store, includes 3D-printing station (as pictured) [Dexigner]

• Louis Vuitton debuts spring campaign on Instagram [Refinery29]

• Neiman Marcus CEO apologises for data breach, offers free credit monitoring [The Verge]

• Overstock CEO: Why we’re accepting Bitcoins [CNBC]

• Five reasons why American Apparel is bullish on Twitter [AdWeek]

• Aerie’s unretouched ads ‘challenge supermodel standards’ for young women [Huffington Post]

• Warby Parker launches interactive 2013 annual report [Laughing Squid]

• Wet Seal hires 16-year-old to build its following on Snapchat [AdAge]

• François-Henri Pinault puts his money where his mobile is via Square, hints at future for luxury world buying into tech [FT Material World]

• Show business: are fashion shows still relevant? [BoF]

• Beacons: what they are, how they work, and why Apple’s iBeacon technology is ahead of the pack [Business Insider]

• Personalisation is key for beauty omnichannel strategy: L’Oréal Luxe exec [Luxury Daily]

• Try on virtual make-up and pay with your hand with retail tech at CES 2014 [BrandChannel]

Animation features heavy in this year’s branded Christmas videos

There’s a lot in the way of cute animation happening this festive period, with noteworthy spots from Hermès, Dolce & Gabbana and Cartier, as well as that big budget number from John Lewis.

Check them each out below:

 

Bonus: This is not quite a Christmas spot, but there’s a fun animation worth a watch from Louis Vuitton too. It pays tribute to games like Tetris and Space Invaders to promote its new iPhone and iPad cases just in time for the holiday season…

Retail’s 7 most innovative Holiday campaigns

This article first appeared on Fashionista 

The holiday season can account for up to 40% of a retailer’s annual revenue, and thus it’s no surprise to see some of our favorite stores (and fashion brands) go all-out with festive campaigns in a bid to capture as many dollars as possible.

Multiple initiatives have lined up to grab our attention this year, but if there’s one thing tying them together, it’s interactivity. From singing contests you can enter to touchscreens you can explore, participation is the biggest push for 2013.

Pinterest is also proving big news. According to a recent study by Lab42, 94% of users say the virtual scrapbooking site has changed how they prepare for the holidays, while 42% have created their own holiday-themed boards. Meanwhile, stats show such activity is also affecting sales. Revenue on retail sites that originated from Pinterest doubled over Thanksgiving weekend, and brands like Target and Topshop have quickly taken advantage.

Here’s our pick of the top seven activations.

1. eBay’s Touchscreen Storefronts

First up is the digital storefronts eBay set up for Rebecca Minkoff, Toms and Sony in the Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall this season. Shopping from them is easy. As with any smartphone or tablet device, you just touch the screen and start browsing products, then complete the order via PayPal on your mobile device. Items can either be delivered to your home for free or picked up at the Sony Gallery on the floor below.

2. Gap’s VSCO-Powered Gift Guide

Gap gave an indie twist to its holiday gift guide by partnering with seven well-known users of photo-editing app VSCO for its Make Love campaign. Those artists acted as both models and photographers, captured in various Gap products themselves and completing their own photo assignments based on one of Gap’s holiday themes: fair isle, indigo, metallic, plaid, stripes, texture and warmth. The results are featured on both a dedicated page on VSCO’s website as well as in Gap.com’s “Give A-Z” holiday guide.

3. John Lewis’ “The Bear and The Hare”

Over in the UK meanwhile, John Lewis wins for the biggest budget when it comes to advertising this year. It spent £7 million ($11.4 million) on a hand-animated and very cute tale called “The Bear and The Hare,” which has garnered more than 10 million views on YouTube to date. What’s innovative is all the components that go with it, and none more so than the windows of its flagship store in London. They feature some of the 188 animal sculptures made from 7,000 everyday products tied to the bear and hare theme, like a reindeer made of Dyson vacuums, a polar bear of Nintendo Wiis and a turkey crafted from a series of rolled up towels. The retailer is also running a contest with the campaign, calling all aspiring singers to record and upload their own versions of Keane’s “Somewhere Only We Know” for a chance to have their recording play with the commercial on Christmas day.

4. JC Penney’s “Jingle Mingle” Singing Contest

JC Penney also called for singing content from its fans this year. Up until Dec. 3 it invited aspiring vocalists to upload videos of themselves singing “Silent Night” to its Jingle Mingle website. Hundreds of the best are then going to be played on the facade of the retailer’s Manhattan Mall store. For each one submitted, JC Penney donated $20 to the United Service Organizations (USO).

5. Topshop’s “Dear Pinterest” Campaign

It was all about Pinterest for Topshop this season. The UK-based retailer used Pinterest to power its online gift guide, and even attached oversized tags to in-store merchandise identifying the ones that had been pinned the most. In November, there was also a giant touchscreen in Topshop’s New York and London flagships that allowed shoppers to pin, share and shop from a gift list there and then.

6. Target’s Pinteresting “Awesome Shop”

Pinterest also makes an appearance at Target this season. Target has launched an e-commerce storefront powered by Pinterest as well as its own reviews this year. Target Awesome Shop, as it’s called, incorporates over 1,000 products that have received four stars or higher in the customer reviews on Target.com and are one of the retailer’s most-pinned products on Pinterest. The result: a highly curated, not to mention awesome, list of recommended items. You can search by category and then click on each product for more information (such as those reviews), before being redirected to the main Target.com site to add them to your shopping cart.

7. Louis Vuitton’s “The Goose Game”

Louis Vuitton created an online board game to feature its holiday gifts. The game, which functions much like “Snakes and Ladders,” is made up of squares featuring Louis Vuitton products that players can purchase in just a few clicks.

Honorable Mention: Kmart’s “Show Your Joe”

It may not be a stunning piece of innovation, but Kmart’s “Show Your Joe” commercial sure brought the laughs — and the views. The video, which was made for TV, has racked up more than 16 million views on YouTube alone since its Nov. 15 release.

Digital snippets: Holiday retail round-up special

Given it’s the day before Thanksgiving in the US – meaning retailers are about to go all out on heavy promotions – here’s a special round-up of all the ways they’re using social and digital to help lure the seasonal shopper and start converting those all-important Holiday sales…

• eBay debuts shoppable touchscreens and digital storefronts for Sony, Toms And Rebecca Minkoff in San Francisco (as pictured) [TechCrunch]

• Target launches “most digitally enabled campaign” in its history, pins hopes on Pinterest this holiday season [Co.Create]

• Macy’s Santa mail campaign invites mobile users to submit images [Mobile Commerce Daily]

• Topshop partners with Pinterest for online and offline Holiday campaign [Fashion&Mash]

• JC Penney launches first Holiday campaign under new marketing head, includes crowdsourcing initiative inviting users to upload videos of themselves singing ‘Silent Night’ [AdAge]

• ‘Reserve in Store’ service rolling out to all Banana Republic stores across the US, 200 Gap [CNBC]

• Jingle all the way at Kmart with #showyourjoe Christmas ad [Fashion&Mash]

• Kohl’s adds emotional brand spots to Holiday mix [AdAge]

• Hollister teases Black Friday deals on YouTube [ClickZ]

• All the interactive elements accompanying John Lewis’ #bearandhare Christmas ad [Fashion&Mash]

• Cath Kidston, Bauble Bar driving traffic with Christmas treasure hunt campaigns [Fashion&Mash]

• Michaels offers interactive Holiday help with live elf available through streaming video [Chain Store Age]

• M&S teases Christmas #magicandsparkle campaign over social [Fashion&Mash]

• Louis Vuitton highlights gift ideas on interactive goose game [Luxury Daily]

• HSN taps SMS, push notifications to drive mobile-only holiday sales [Mobile Commerce Daily]

• Tillys runs ugly Christmas sweater contest over Instagram [Tillys]

• Neiman Marcus teams up with Shapeways to offer 3D printed holiday capsule collection [PSFK]

Cannes Lions 2013 round-up: fashion and beauty winners

It was a big year for fashion at the 60^th annual Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity – the ad industry’s version of the Oscars if you will. As already reported, Burberry, Vivienne Westwood and Annie Leibovitz were all on stage, as was Justin Cooke, CMO of Topshop (as pictured), in a guest appearance during YouTube’s slot.

He talked to the idea of emotion in marketing: “When people feel happy, they want to influence others to do the same. At Topshop we refer to the three I’s; ignite a conversation, inspire our customers and then use that influence to build our UK-centric brand into a global entity.”

Topshop walked away with a bronze Media Lion for best use of social media for its Future of the Fashion Show campaign in February.

Here are some of the other fashion and beauty campaigns that won:

Dove Real Beauty Sketches: No surprise here – this campaign picked up the Titanium Grand Prix at Cannes as well as gold Lions in nearly every other category. Created by Ogilvy Brasil, it aimed to prove to women they’re more beautiful than they think they are by conducting a social experiment whereby an FBI-trained sketch artist drew their portraits based first on their own descriptions and then a stranger’s. The resulting film, which captures their reactions to the sketches, racked up over 4.5bn social media impressions. Dove also won a gold in the Film category for its Camera Shy campaign.

Nike Find Your Greatness: Always a big winner at Cannes, this year was no exception for Nike. It won a silver in the Titanium category for its Find Your Greatness campaign that surrounded last year’s Olympics. Ambush marketing at its finest (given Nike wasn’t an official sponsor), it highlighted that greatness isn’t reserved for just the elite athletes participating in the big event in the chosen city, but can be found worldwide – importantly in all the other places around the world also called London. Nike also won a silver for its Jogger campaign, and bronzes for She Runs the Night and Voices.

adidas Window Shopping: Not to be outdone, adidas also walked away with an armful of awards, this time for its adidas Neo Window Shopping initiative created by TBWA Helsinki. This saw a fully functional virtual store accessible from on the street by combining windows with the brand’s already existing e-commerce. Users could connect their smartphones via a simple URL and a pin (no need for an app or QR codes here), and then interact with the products on screen, dragging them into a shopping bag to make them appear on their own device to buy. It won both gold and silver Cyber Lions, as well as three bronzes in the Media and Mobile categories.

Macy’s Yes, Virginia the Musical: Macy’s localised its long-standing Yes, Virginia campaign in 2012 with a musical for schools in the busy run-up to the Christmas period. That initiative, created by JWT New York, saw it winning both a gold and a silver Lion in the Branded Content and Entertainment category.

Uniqlo Storms Pinterest: A smart move by Uniqlo over Pinterest also scooped a gold Lion in the Design category at Cannes this year. To promote its new Dry Mesh T-Shirts the Japanese retailer, along with Firstborn New York, created an impossible-to-miss, branded mosaic on the virtual scrapbooking site. As users scrolled through Pinterest’s public feeds giant blocks of branded images appeared and seemed to animate. It was done using 100 shell accounts on the platform that were later switched to branded Uniqlo ones. Uniqlo also won a bronze Media Lion for its Wake Up campaign.

Kmart Ship my Pants: You may have spotted this one already – Kmart’s humourous new video ad that plays on the phrase “Ship my Pants” to tout its new free shipping service. A winner for me on element of surprise alone, and at Cannes with silvers and bronzes in both the Film and Promo & Activation categories.

Geox Amphibox: Geox’s campaign for its everyday waterproof shoe walked away with gold, silver and bronze awards in the Cyber category as well as a bronze in Media. The aim was to prove the performance qualities of the shoes, so the team took four Facebook fans to the wettest place on earth, Cherrapunjee in India (which receives 11.7m of annual rainfall) to put them to the test. An online interactive documentary resulted.

Asos #bestnightever: I’ve commented a lot on shoppable films in the past, but there’s no escaping the fact they’re slowly making an increasing impact in the advertising space. Asos won a silver Media Lion on that basis this year for its #bestnightever campaign (even if the stats that went alongside aren’t necessarily directly the result of it to be honest), which saw three shoppable music videos created.

Bronze awards otherwise went to:

• Louis Vuitton in Film for its Core Values campaign starring Muhammad Ali

• Converse in Outdoor for its Highways campaign

• La Redoute in Outdoor for its Live Weather Billboard

And here’s a particularly nice message from Christopher Bailey, chief creative officer of Burberry, to close: “You have to take a leap of faith to move into a world that your industry or sector is not used to, but if you believe in it, and can feel it, it will be stronger and more believable in itself.”

Digital snippets: Louis Vuitton, Victoria Beckham, Dior, Shazam, Amazon

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

 

• Louis Vuitton promotes “prostitution chic” in controversial short film (as above) [BrandChannel]

• Victoria Beckham enters e-commerce [Vogue.co.uk]

• Dior parades exclusive lip colours via one-day Twitter activation [Luxury Daily]

• Shazam creates fashion ID app [Telegraph Fashion]

• Amazon’s confused foray into fashion tries to please too many women [Pando Daily]

• Stefano Gabbana’s Twitter tirade after tax evasion ruling on sale of D&G [Daily Telegraph]

• Mira Duma: finger on the trigger of social media [South China Morning Post]

• Augmented reality, intelligent mapping: fashion and tech collide in China [JingDaily]

• That’s So 2012: have Pinterest, Foursquare and Groupon peaked? [Inc]

Louis Vuitton’s #PFW live-stream sees shareable three-second video clips

Louis Vuitton rounded out the fashion week season in Paris this morning with a live-stream show that invited viewers connected via Facebook to record and share their own short video clips.

“Share your favorite moments with your friends,” said the intro from the brand. Accordingly, it allowed users to capture up to three seconds of the show in a small window on the bottom left of the stream they were watching. They could then play it back before agreeing to post it to their Facebook timeline for their friends to also see.

The idea is similar to that launched by Topshop last season, which enabled users to “Shoot the Show”, posting still images to their pages. LV’s idea moves the concept on, while simultaneously tying to the success of apps like Vine that are focused on short, easily shareable videos.

In practice it was a little bit sticky, as well as restrictive in terms of what you could capture – the smaller window mainly showed close-up shots of the collection, and the frame didn’t allow you to snap multiple sections like Vine does. Still, it’s a great leap forward again for the social side of fashion weeks.

LV also invited users to its “Social Room” during the show, a side bar that opened out to reveal a multitude of social media updates from both its own official accounts as well as from guests and publications in attendance.

Digital snippets: Louis Vuitton, Target, John Lewis, M&S, Chinese shoppers

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

 

• Louis Vuitton releases Retracing the Trunk video (as above) [Dazed Digital]

• Target hosts interactive runway show powered by Twitter [BrandChannel]

• Q&A: John Lewis on the ingredients of a successful multichannel retail strategy [Econsultancy]

• Rosie Huntington-Whiteley’s M&S lingerie advert complaints dismissed [Vogue.co.uk]

• Chinese shoppers have gone mobile. So should brands [JingDaily]

• Fashion 2.0: Online vintage heats up [BoF]

• Three major hurdles brands face launching e-commerce in China [Fashion’s Collective]

• 50 must-have fashion apps to download now [StyleCaster]

• The most influential personal style bloggers right now [Fashionista]

Louis Vuitton video highlights 2012 digital activity

Louis Vuitton has released a short video summarising its digital efforts during 2012.

In it is everything from its partnership with The Selby to 10 million fans on Facebook, highlights from its mobile initiatives, its campaign with Muhammad Ali as well as all-things polka dot with Yayoi Kusama. So too are there multiple backstage shots and product close-ups throughout, as well as Instagram pics and catwalk videos. It closes on frames from its L’Invitation au Voyage ad, shot over the Louvre in Paris.

Reads the write-up: “As an innovative and creative fashion brand at the forefront of digital, Louis Vuitton aims to produce qualitative and diversified content, highlighting the different aspects of the House, its values, heritage and the Art of Travel.”

[via BrandChannel]

Digital snippets: Louis Vuitton, Love magazine, & Other Stories, Nike, Caché, Hearst

Happy new year one and all! To kickstart 2013, here are a handful of stories surrounding all things fashion and digital from over the holiday period you may have missed:

• Louis Vuitton pushes spring/summer line with downloadable paper doll cutouts (as pictured) [Luxury Daily]

• Love magazine released a star-studded Fashion Nativity video on Christmas Day featuring Laura Carmichael, Pixie Geldof, Giles Deacon, Henry Holland, Abbey Clancy and more [Love]

• New video from H&M’s forthcoming & Other Stories line reveals craftsmanship of bags in its first collection [YouTube]

• Nike gamifies every day human movement with NikeFuel Missions video game [DigitalBuzzBlog]

• Fashion retailer Caché launches mobile app featuring push notifications [AdWeek]

• Hearst magazines is stealth e-commerce player [Material World]