Fashion's Collective

3 Top Brands Comment on ROI

fashionscollective — Thu, 17 May 2012 14:02:56 +0000

At Style Coalition’s Fashion 2.0 event this past Tuesday during Internet Week, three of the top fashion brands in digital were interviewed in front of an audience. Here’s what Bergdorfs, DKNY and Kate Spade all had to say about the both dreaded and necessary “Return On Investment” conversation in social media.

“ROI is so much more than dollars now…it’s what’s exciting people now” – Cannon Hodge, Bergdorf Goodman

“I am not obsessed with ROI. I don’t even think about it…It’s brand evangelism I’m after.”-Aliza Licht, DKNY

“ROI is not what drives social. You can’t be an innovator if you’re strapped to the wallet of the CEO” -Lindsay Knaak, Kate Spade

Photo credits: Windows8Update

Platform Spotlight: Mulu

Elizabeth Canon — Wed, 16 May 2012 05:00:39 +0000

Officially launched in 2012 just before the SXSW festival, Mulu.me is one of the most exciting curation-based community platforms. Joining the ranks of Pinterest, The Fancy, OpenSky, Lyst and Svpply, Mulu allows users to save and share items they love, with one major point of distinction: a direct purchase path that allows users to make money for themselves, for their businesses or for the charities of their choice.

So far, brands like Michael Kors and Elie Tahari, and celebrities including Jeremy Piven and Kerry Washington, have taken notice and set up an official presence. In its very first month, the platform distributed $25,000 to causes.

Today, we talk with the founder of Mulu, Amaryllis Fox, to bring you an inside look at the platform and what it means for the industry.

Amaryllis Fox, as featured on Paper Mag

Officially launched in 2012 just before the SXSW festival, Mulu.me is one of the most exciting new curation-based community platforms. Joining the ranks of Pinterest, The Fancy, OpenSky, Lyst and Svpply, Mulu allows users to save and share items that they love, with one major point of distinction: a direct purchase path that permits users to make money for themselves, for their businesses, or for the charities of their choice.

So far, brands like Michael Kors and Elie Tahari and celebrities including Jeremy Piven and Kerry Washington, have taken notice and set up an official presence. In its very first month, the platform distributed $25,000 to causes.

Today, we talk with the founder of Mulu, Amaryllis Fox, to bring you an inside look at the platform and what it means for the industry.

Q: Okay, let’s get this one out of the way. How is Mulu different from Pinterest?

A: Pinterest and Mulu are both image-based and so often get compared, but that’s really where the similarity ends. Pinterest is an online pin board, a way to save and categorize images online. Mulu is more of a social commerce platform where friends, experts, magazines, and celebrities recommend the things they love and every purchase supports a curator or their favorite cause.

Q: Many ideas start with a moment of inspiration and then snowball. What was your moment of inspiration and how did it evolve?

A: It was sort of two-fold. In its earliest incarnation, I was eighteen and deciding between two very different paths in life – aerospace engineering at the naval academy and law at Oxford. I figured some geographic perspective was in order and wound up working along the Thai-Burmese border. It was the first time that I’d done hat-in-hand fundraising for sixteen health clinics along the border and it struck me as pretty unsustainable. There had to be a way to support those kinds of social programs as a byproduct of an otherwise interesting, useful, commercial project.

Oxford seemed marginally better suited for that type of the thing than USNA, so off I went. A few years later, the idea for Mulu gelled during a concert at the Edinburgh Festival. We’d been talking about how Oprah’s recommendations had generated $10m for third-party businesses over 25 seasons. I’d done some work with affiliate programs – the 5-10% that retailers send bloggers as a thank you for referred purchases. The question that struck me at that concert was, “What would happen if recommendations like Oprah’s, and those from our own friends and family, were all made on a platform that pulled out that affiliate payment for a social cause?” Sending a percentage of every transaction we all conduct online to fund something important was a pretty exciting prospect.

Q: How should individuals and brands see (and seize) the opportunity on Mulu?

A: By recommending the things they love on Mulu, both people and companies have the opportunity to share their favorite finds, build their lifestyle brands, and earn money for a cause they believe in.

For retailers, it’s about engaging their communities to make an impact by sharing their favorite products from a given line – that’s a really exciting positive circle – raising awareness for the brand, translating into sales, and supporting an amazing cause. It’s an actual win-win-win.

Q: Tell us more about the purchase path and the affiliate model; how does this work?

A: When a visitor clicks one of your recommendations, on your page or in an answer you’ve created, a portion of any resulting sales (called an affiliate fee) is given back to Mulu. That amount generally falls in the 3 to 15 percent range of the sale price. It can go as high as 20 percent in industries with high margins, such as jewelry or flowers. You, or your cause, get 50 percent of that commission. As your community comments on, shares, or buys your picks, you earn guru points that promote you to earning 75% and, ultimately, 90% of that for yourself or your cause.

Q: The site has this nice mix of images and text questions. Where did the idea to allow users to pose questions come in? How do you think this serves the community?

A: Q and A is such an integral part of our product discovery and assessment process offline; it seemed only natural to offer a kind of Quora for products. Think about the number of times you chat with your friends about what they’re reading, the film they saw last weekend, where they recommend you eat in NYC, or what you should buy your new squeeze for his or her birthday. Being able to open those questions up to a community of friends and experts is pretty powerful. Imagine Lance Armstrong recommending your next bike or Pete Wentz answering your question about a beginner guitar.

Q: How is the celebrity angle working so far and is it different than the OpenSky model? Do you see this being a big driver of traffic, participation and purchase?

A: OpenSky and lots of other great sites out there use celebrities to endorse the products that they sell. Mulu is a very different kind of project. We have a completely open, democratic platform where any regular user, expert, brand, or celebrity alike can create rich multimedia pages filled with their favorite items (products, places, books, music), “curate” their picks to share with the world, and earn money for themselves or the cause that they choose. That’s a powerful idea, enabling anyone from any walk of life to earn cash for themselves or their favorite charity using only their influence, big or small, and their awesome taste in shoes, books, camping gear, or just about anything else.

Q: What are guru points and how can we get some?

A: Guru points are Mulu’s way of highlighting users who are really nailing it in a particular area. You earn them any time an item you recommend gets loved, commented on, shared, or bought. As you collect them, you work toward becoming a leader in a specific area; for example, a tech guru or a fashion guru. Once that happens, your answers in those categories are highlighted as authoritative and a higher percentage of your sales go to you or your cause. We’ll be building out this gamification element over the next few months.

Q: What do you see for the future of the Muliverse?

A: We’re really excited about a number of fantastic collaborations on the horizon, as well as a new look and feel to the site, designed to help surface all the amazing content our users create every day. We’ve just wrapped up a competition with Universal Pictures, challenging fans to curate their Snow White and the Huntsman picks in support of 826LA, an amazing program supporting at-risk kids through storytelling and creative writing. Before that, we collaborated with LIVESTRONG to get Lance’s fans curating collections inspired by the idea “Yellow” – anything from Yellow Submarine by the Beatles to lemon sorbet, with all proceeds supporting LIVESTRONG’s amazing programs. We have more of those kinds of partnerships lined up for summer, as well as a few surprises in store.

In terms of the future, our role is to connect users with everything that they hear about in conversation with friends, read about in a magazine, watch on TV, or see tucked under a celebrity’s arm. Love your friend’s iPhone case? Buy it from his Mulu page. Want the album you just saw reviewed? Buy it from the reviewer’s page. Kind of digging the coffee table in a film you just watched? Buy it from the film’s page. And do it all for a cause. I mean, really—who says you can’t find the things you want while doing a little good?

How Michael Kors Drives Engagement thru Mobile-friendly Facebook Apps

Elizabeth Canon — Tue, 08 May 2012 05:00:46 +0000

Did you know that over 425 million people access Facebook from a mobile device every month? As a brand, capitalizing on your Facebook fan base through applications is a strategy employed by a vast majority, yet almost none are designed to be compatible with mobile devices. One of the first brands to overcome this challenge is Michael Kors, with the launch of their recent Mother’s Day campaign, “What She Wants.”

Typically, launching applications requires a bevy of skill sets. Brand marketers are tasked with generating the right concept to serve both the brand’s goals and the audience’s tastes. Designers and programmers creatively bring the ides to life, and technology allowing advanced functionality like contests or voting is built in (usually through a third party service provider or agency partner). The resources in time, staff and dollars that go into application development are not insignificant. Why then have so many applications been launched without the ability to provide such a large audience with a mobile experience?

Until recently, Facebook did not allow developers to determine if a user was coming from a desktop or a mobile device, and so applications could not be developed accordingly.

Quickly responding to this new information, in partnership with Gin Lane media (a boutique New York interactive agency), Michael Kors implemented a responsive design system. As covered in a previous article on Fashion’s Collective,

“Responsive Design is a powerful trend that suits our users’ environment and context…In order to make APPS, websites, and documents easy to read, navigate and use across the variety of devices that people use today, design needs a specific approach so that layouts are tailored to the characteristics of each gadget, such as screen sizes and controls (i.e. click or touch).”

Essentially, the Michael Kors application interface detects if you are coming from a smartphone or desktop, and then presents a design that automatically adapts to the screen size, resulting in a seamless user experience regardless of the device.

When it comes to running a contest, timelines, ease of use and access can be just as strong a factor in capturing entries, increasing shares and making a positive impression as the campaign’s concept or prize. For Michael Kors, this is even more the case, as the contest calls for users to enter to win daily prizes over a two week period.

The “What She Wants” application is being updated on a daily basis, a compelling reason to drive repeat visitors, wherever they are. Fans can enter to win, or purchase pieces from the Michael Kors Summer Collection, straight from the app. Within the first week, over 50% of the entries have come from users on mobile devices.

One reason Facebook holds so much promise for brands and businesses is that, as your fan base grows, so does your exposure for the next campaign. For Michael Kors, the Mother’s Day campaign is the first the brand has run since hitting the one million fan milestone. Launching with an application that is mobile-friendly, and cross promoted through blogger partnerships and via Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and DestinationKors.com, ensures the brand is committed to evolving in the digital space in smart ways that harness technology to best serve the user, and consequently, the brand.

5 Noteworthy Pinterest Campaigns

Elizabeth Canon — Wed, 02 May 2012 05:00:10 +0000

Pinterest, and its popularity as a topic discussed in the conference rooms of fashion industry companies, continues to grow at incredible speed. Many questions arise, “Should our brand be on Pinterest?”, “What are the legal ramifications of Pinterest?”, even “How do I use Pinterest?”. In today’s round up, we gather a snippet of examples of how some fashion brands are using the platform specifically to run campaigns. It comes as no surprise that many of the initiatives target the bridal audience, a major subset of users on Pinterest. What’s especially interesting, though, is how the logistics in running a campaign differ from one brand to the next. Some start the campaign on Pinterest and then take it off to other platforms, like Facebook. Others set up contests where some of the content and title is mandatory, while some invite users to be more freely creative. Through all of it, inferences can be gleaned that may impact your brand’s Pinterest strategy. Here, 5 campaigns to take note of:

Oscar de la Renta: Live Broadcast of Bridal Runway Show

No stranger to digital savvy, Oscar de la Renta elected to use Pinterest to unveil looks from the new bridal collection, as they went down the runway. Backstage shots and hair and makeup images mingled with product pics, resulting in a pinboard that not only conveyed a collection, it took an exclusive experience and re-created it for a larger audience.

Harrods: Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Street Party

This London retailer decided to use the visual scrapbooking platform to convey celebration-themed street party concepts for the event and has invited users to do the same. The winner’s concept will be used to create the actual window display at Harrods for the occasion. Users can enter by:

1. Creating a pinboard of their celebration theme. Harrods has posted their own to provide inspiration. Boards must be titled, “Harrods Street Party Window”.

2. Tweeting a link of the board to @HarrodsofLondon and adding the hashtag, #HarrodsWindows

3. The retailer chooses 3 boards to represent the finalist, posts these on their Facebook page and asks fans to vote on the winner, whose concept will be used for the store window displays.

BCBG: “I Do” Contest

Ever thought planning a wedding with a $5K budget was possible? BCBG partnered with Ruffled to put people’s creativity to the the test. The winning board receives $5,000 for their wedding and a BCBG bridal dress. Here’s what was needed to enter:

1. Create a board showing the elements in your wedding with a budget of $5K.

2. Be sure to include at least 3 items from BCBG and 3 items from Ruffled and categorize your board under Weddings & Events.

3. Email the link to your board to be entered.

Vespa and kate spade new york: Ride Colorfully

Where would you zoom off to? That’s the question Vespa and kate spade want you to answer by creating a visual pinboard. Here’s how to enter:

1. Create a board and title it “Ride colorfully”

2. Use the hashtag #ridecolorfully for every item you pin.

3. Four winners will be chosen to receive a brand new kate spade vespa.

Shopbop: Wedding Boutique Anniversary Contest

Capitalizing on the plethora of brides-to-be using Pinterest to discover, research, compare, save, and organize, Shopbop invites users to win up to $10,000 in Shopbop gifts card by doing these three things:

1. Following all Shopbop boards on Pinterest.

2. Use specific merchandise on Shopbop to create a board depicting your dream wedding, specifically titled, “Wedding Inspiration from Shopbop.com” and saved to the Weddings & Events category in Pinterest.

3. Email the link to your board to Shopbop to officially enter.

Photo credits: cbsnews.com

The Latest Trends in Web Design

Roeland de Jong — Tue, 01 May 2012 05:00:16 +0000

I thought it was time to bring you some of the latest on interactive design. There’s a lot going on when it comes to Social Media; brands are attempting to finalize strategies and maximize Return on Investments to acquire a strong position on emerging social networks such as Pinterest.

However, to increase conversion rates with the traffic we generate through these platforms, we need to ensure that our self-managed digital flagship is neat, modern, on-brand, tailored to different devices, and takes advantage of the latest in web design.

While being responsible for our brands’ digital media projects, we encounter a wide variety of issues that we need to tackle simultaneously. There’s the structure of the entire website, the architecture of individual sections, the design of particular recurring elements, and the overall aesthetics, content, and behavior that should perfectly represent the brand in our modern age.

While technology develops and new devices are brought to the user, creative freedom doesn’t necessarily expand, and the design job doesn’t consequently get easier, but clever solutions are at our fingertips. This article aims to explain and exemplify two of the major trends that can fuel creative discussions with your digital teams.

PARALLAX SCROLLING

Parallax scrolling is a technique wherein background images move slower or in different directions than the overlaying foreground elements. The feeling of depth that is generated from this behavior can at times be stunning, and at times annoying. We have seen the world’s biggest brands experiment with this trend. A few examples for you to discover:

http://www.manufacturedessai.it/it/

http://www.ok-studios.de/home/

http://www.nike.com/jumpman23/aj2012/

http://artofflightmovie.com/

http://www.beetle.com/

RESPONSIVE DESIGN

Responsive Design is a powerful trend that suits our users’ environment and context. We have all been bombarded with the ‘CLOUD’, which serves the user who desires data in the form of APPS and documents across multiple devices without the information being stored on each device individually.

In order to make APPS, websites, and documents easy to read, navigate and use across the variety of devices that people use today, design needs a specific approach so that layouts are tailored to the characteristics of each gadget, such as screen sizes and controls (i.e. click or touch).

Responsive design, a few examples:

http://2012.ampersandconf.com

http://www.designmadeingermany.de/magazin/5/

Resize your browser screen to see how the layout changes when the window gets smaller.

Responsive Design (one size fits all) is not something that is applicable to every brand or every website. The important message this trend conveys is that we need to understand that each device requires a specific approach when it comes to aesthetics, content, and behavior, while strongly taking into account the context and device of the user.

For example, mobile web browsing is taking over the desktop and as brands and designers we should anticipate these developments. The true power lies in strategizing user access points. When and how do people use a mobile device to access online content (websites, campaigns, etc.)? What is their context? And what are they looking for specifically?

Especially when it comes to mobile, the boundaries set by screen size, the context of the user, and the controls to interact with our sites require us to think of mobile-specific interfaces that allow for easy reading and quick navigation. In my opinion, this is a fantastic challenge.

Photo Credits: Olena Cherneko