Gucci’s Men’s Autumn Winter 2011 Fashion Show on Monday, January 17th

You might get a VIRTUAL GUEST access to the Event with Gucci Connect.

You are invited to attend the Men’s Autumn Winter 2011 fashion show, presented in Milan, Italy on January 17, 2011, as a virtual guest. http://www.gucciconnect.com/

Through the GucciConnect.com event platform, Gucci uniquely connects the event world and the virtual world by opening its fashion show doors to a worldwide audience. GucciConnect.com allows users to experience the Milan fashion show with friends, creating a social network, and providing the best seat in the house to Gucci’s most committed fans.

• Watch the Autumn Winter Men’s fashion show from 4 different camera angles, including a view from the highly coveted front row
• Share your webcam video or photo, displayed to the virtual audience at GucciConnect.com
• Invite your friends to join you with front row seats! Send an invite from GucciConnect.com to your friends and assign your VIP front row seating to watch the live-streaming fashion show alongside your friends
• A real-time virtual guest list announces attendees as they arrive at the e-vent space
• Live chat with other attendees before, during and after the show
• Connect on Facebook and Twitter

RSVP to request your VIP e-ticket and then send your VIP front row invites to your friends!

Alla ricerca dell’emozione

23/12/2010 | a cura di Antonio Savarese

“E-(motional) cambia le regole del gioco: i contenuti multimediali diventano come il web, dove l’utente può andare avanti in approfondimenti quanto gli serve (via hyper links), diversamente dalla carta stampata.”

Chris Anderson ha detto con molto clamore non poco tempo fa che il web è morto, molto si è discusso in Rete con opinioni pro e contro, forse quello che è vero è che il Web sta cambiando, sta cambiando la modalità di fruizione e sta cambiando la modalità di interazione. E se il mezzo cambia, cambia di conseguenza anche il modo di usarlo e gli strumenti, ecco quindi emergere nuovi progetti e nuovi software. In particolare nel mondo dell’advertising i banner sono sempre più oggetti del passato e si fanno avanti nuovi strumenti che promettono una maggiore interazione con l’utente in pieno stile 2.0.

Ne abbiamo parlato con Andrey Golub – CTO di Moda e Tecnologia

LEGGI L’ARTICOLO SU DataManager.it

Why luxury brands should embrace mobile

via Mobile Commerce Daily

The rapid adoption of the smartphone and the mobile medium is one of the most important trends that shopper marketers are tracking this year and next.

Consumers are not only using their mobile phones to make purchases, but also increasing using them to perform shopping research on their way to a store and while they are in the store.

This trend will only increase with Google’s Android and Apple’s iPhone activating 450,000 phones a day and as a generation of teenagers, who currently average 3,339 text messages a month, come of age.

Luxury shoppers are early adopters of powerful smartphones, but paradoxically, luxury brands are lagging behind when it comes to leveraging mobile marketing.

This is not unusual in and of itself.

Mind the gap
Luxury brands traditionally trail other retail brands when it comes to technology adoption and in providing cross-channel user experiences.

Unlike wide-appeal brands such as Gap or J.C. Penney, luxury brands’ core customers often have higher service expectations due to the higher price points of luxury goods, which luxury brand managers mistakenly assume exclusively means personal service from sales associates.

In reality luxury shoppers’ expectations for high-quality service extend to great self-service tools and rich multichannel shopping experiences.

In a recent New York Times interview, Christopher Bailey, chief designer at Burberry, explained that part of the continued success of the venerable luxury fashion brand is due to its new cross-channel initiatives, especially in the mobile medium.

In fact, during the fashion house’s runway shows, spectators are furnished with mobile devices that allow them to reserve items in real-time while they are viewing them on the runway.

However, Burberry – which ensures that its customers can interact and experience brand consistency across every possible channel – is the exception to the rule.

(See Burberry takes third place: Luxury Marketer of the Year)

Many luxury retailers continue to invest their resources in the same old tools.

For instance, luxury brands spend millions on store facades and interior fixtures, yet ignore the parking lots that surround the stores – leaving them aesthetically displeasing and visually at-odds with the brand experience inside the store.

There is a similar incongruity related to mobile.

While their in-store experience may be unparalleled, luxury brands often receive failing grades when it comes to pre-tailing, an increasingly important step in a consumer’s purchase decision.

Luxury brands need to move quickly to offer mobile and online pre-shopping tools that seamlessly integrate with their existing ecommerce and retail experiences.

These marketers must ask themselves: Do all channels have visibility into a customer’s past purchases, gifts and wish lists?

In many ways, mobile represents the latest incarnation of the venerable clientelling practices that luxury brands have leveraged for years.

Associate sales, not sales associate
Why is mobile so important for luxury brands? Brand perception, loyalty and retention, for starters.

Luxury brand customers feel they have a relationship – even a bond – with the brands themselves, which does not extend, interestingly enough, to the sales associates or other human faces of the brands.

Mobile, in particular, allows customers to limit their interaction directly to the brand via the use of technology and to keep their interaction and brand experience consistent with their own perception of the brand.

For example, users of Gucci’s iPhone application are treated to exclusive music mixes by celebrity DJ, Mark Ronson, as well as sneak peeks of forthcoming merchandise, such as the Gucci Kids line.

The brand is rewarding its customers for using the mobile medium, offering a more intimate interaction than might be had in a bricks-and-mortar store, while also removing the chance that a single sales associate’s bad day could translate into lasting damage to the brand via customer dissatisfaction.

Of course, one of the primary justifications for the mobile medium is the same for Walmart as for Neiman Marcus: simple convenience.

Consumers increasingly rely on mobile devices for everything from calendaring to weather forecasts to GPS, and this ubiquity extends to shopping.

In fact, according to a recent survey by Brand Anywhere and Luth Research Inc., Web retailers could increase consumer engagement by 85 percent simply by offering a mobile version of their Web site (see story).

So, the time is now for luxury brands to add mobile to their channel mix.

While the benefits are numerous for all retailers, luxury brands, in particular, stand to gain higher engagement, sales and retention rates by offering a strong user experience to customers who clearly want – and expect – a direct, intimate and convenient way of interacting with the brands.

Jason Goldberg is vice president of strategy and customer experience at CrossView. Portland, OR. Reach him at jgoldberg@crossview.com.

Zara’s “light” social media strategy encouraging brand love, but not purchase consideration

via Wavematrix.com

by Joe Waby on 15th December 2010

Zara show how a fashion brand can engage consumers around their products and brand by only posting content infrequently to their Facebook page. However, while the strategy is successful at prompting brand love, it does not encourage purchase consideration.

Zara have a very popular Facebook page with 7.5 millions fans. Zara post official content rather infrequently (perhaps once a week) and then let the clothes do the talking by posting photos of their latest collections. WaveMetrix analysed the consumer response to this rather “light” approach to social media strategy to understand whether it was successfully engaging consumers.

WaveMetrix social media monitoring shows that the Zara social media strategy is successful at engaging consumers around their products and brand. Consumers “love” the “cool” fashion collections and “beautiful”, “quality” clothes from their “favourite” fashion brand. Using 100% human analysis, WaveMetrix can ascertain that while Zara are successful at encouraging brand love, purchase consideration is at very low levels.

Zara’s social media provokes positive buzz about their products, fashion collections and brand:

• Consumers discuss Zara’s “quality” and “stylish” clothing: People say clothes from Zara are “beautiful”, “good quality” and “trendy”. They also say the clothes collections are “the best”, “top” and “exquisite”. Some mention when they last bought Zara clothing or say which items they “love” such as Zara’s “t-shirts”, “polos” and “dresses”

• Consumers discuss the fashion collections featured in the official social media content: People “love” the “cool” new fashion collections. They say the featured clothes are “gorgeous”, “classy” and “amazing”. They praise the “very nice”, “great” designs and a few say they “want” or “must have” items from the collections

• The Zara Facebook page attracts a lot of positive brand buzz: Consumers post that they “really love Zara” as it is “the best” and their “favourite”. Some say Zara is a “cool” and “gorgeous” brand that is “a lifestyle”. However, a few say they “love Zara”, but they “can’t afford” to shop there

• Some consumers ask for a Zara store in their city: Consumers ask for a Zara store in places such as California, Cape Town and Sydney. A few want the online store to be available in the US while others complain that their “online order hasn’t arrived yet”

While Zara social media is successful at encouraging brand love, it is less successful at prompting purchase consideration:

• Over half of consumers who comment say they “love” Zara: Consumers use the Facebook wall to post spontaneously that they “love” Zara and their “fashion collections” and “clothes”. Others respond to the official fashion collection content by saying they “love Zara” and their “fashionable clothes”

• However, purchase consideration is at very low levels: A few say they “must have” items in the fashion collections, but levels of purchase consideration are at much lower levels than seen for other fashion brands

The Present And Future of Product Information

via thenextweb.com.

• note Andrey: It looks like this article was written just in order to introduce e-(motional), the TRUE Interactive Video Technology by Moda e Tecnologia Srl . Thank you TheNextWeb!

As the fight to stand out and remain relevant above the noise online gets harder, the information that frames a product sold has become an important element for both the buyer and the e-tailer. The content that goes with a product has gained significant gravity in the equation that defines the sales of a product, from user generated content such as reviews and comments about a product, to product description and manuals. The growth of social media and the increasing influence of word-of-mouth marketing have dictated the importance of adding content on e-commerce sites that would urge the customers to share info about new products on their social networks. This content has become an integral part of the customer’s experience and can make or break a sale.

A picture is worth 1,000 words: Images are a very important part of any e-commerce site. The five senses play a major part in our buying decisions but e-tailers can only use just two to make their products more appealing: vision and hearing. Apart from providing a rich high quality photo gallery to show every aspect and detail of their products, many e-tailers prefer to add to a written product info and a video description of the product like Zappos. Zappos videos feature next-door people who introduce themselves in the beginning the video instead of professional models with voice over, to create a more relatable feel. Then there’s Asos, who prefers to feature catwalk videos of its clothes. Further away from the old-school telemarketing are the videos featured on Youtique by French connection, a YouTube store, where instead of “dry” infomercials, they present the clothes while giving away styling tips for different occasions or with humorous how-tos like: How to eat spaghetti – in a gorgeous dress and bolero. Video is a great communication tool for your e-shop, as it allows a deeper experience with the products, but you need to figure out the style that appeals to your audience. Remember to upload it in a form that’s easy to share on social networks, for instance on Zappos and Asos, although the product page is easy to share, the video itself is not, unlike the case of Youtique.

Copywriting: Especially when it comes to fashion, the line between an editorial and an e-shop has completely blurred with e-commerce sites like Net-A-Porter running their own magazines and on then editorial sites like Refinery29 launching e-commerce sections. A great example of practical information presented in a “shareable” way is J’aime mon carre by Hermès, which shows different ways one can wear a Hermès scarf. Unfortunately this mini site is disconnected from the Hermès boutique so one can only look at the scarf and see the design’s ID but not shop it directly. Even simple short texts like the ones that describe Groupon deals play their part into attracting the consumer and spice up the experience. Groupon counts many writers among its staff (as of September 2010, 70) and has an entire style guide to help its writers find the right words to describe the deals. Keep in mind that while you want your text to be engaging, you need to convey the product info in a clear way so that the consumer will get the necessary info with the first scan of the text.

In-store: More and more customers look up product info online while shopping in-store, either by manually searching on the Internet or by scanning products’ bar and QR codes. BestBuy has included 2D bar codes in store to enhance the off line shopping experience. The customer can scan the codes with the BestBuy app and discover product info, offers and rewards. Many food and beverages companies enable the consumers to find out information about their products’ origins online by entering the product ID in a web app. Coca-Cola UK has launched a Web app that allows consumers to trace the environmental impact of their can or bottle of Coke. Other examples are Dole Organic which gives the consumers a tour of the farm their fruit came from once they enter the fruit’s sticker number online; Askinosie chocolate provides the customers their chocolate’s background once they enter their ‘Choc-O-Lot’ number, and more. People will look up products before they shop anyway so you might as well embrace this part of the shopping experience and curate the information needed in an easy to access and navigable way. Openness and honesty are the basis of any good dating profile and product description, so make sure you get back a: Like!

Social Media Content: The reviews of friends and family spread across different social media platforms are worth equally if not more as the information you put up on your e-commerce site. No way to ignore them anymore, so try to find a way to add information from the customer’s online network as a social layer on your e-shop. Levi’s has managed this with the Friend’s store showing what your Facebook friends liked through Facebook connect, same thing Amazon has done with Facebook connect (beta), providing gift recommendation for friends and birthday reminders as well as Amazon products recommendations based on your personal profile. Marissa Mayer in her recent LeWeb interview talked about social and real-time search and that taking into account parameters like the user’s location and tastes, comes up with curated results according to his context. For instance she said: “If you’re sitting in a restaurant, can we pull up the menu? And can we pull up a menu that isn’t the menu that the waiter would have just handed you, but a social menu – where you can see what other people have ordered, what other people like, how’s it’s been marked up.” How will e-tailers handle contextual user-generated content and integrate it in their online presence?

In a competitive market place shifting fast to catch up with the latest technology innovations, the question raised is how to enrich and handle your product information in order to stay relevant throughout all the various communication channels. What do you think the future of product information looks like?