Case #4: Barneys / Electric Holiday

Main Ingredients:

Walt Disney + Star Cast (Nicholas Ghesquiere, Alber Elbaz, Guido Palau, Pat McGrath, Julien d'Y, Steven Meisel, Mario Sorrenti, Juergen Teller, Carine Roitfeld, Anna Dello Russo, Cathy Horyn, Glenda Bailey, Bridget Foley, Emmanuelle Alt, Suzy Menkes, Franca Sozzani, Ed Filipowski, Daphne Guinness, Sarah Jessica Parker, Lady Gaga, Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Bryan Boy) + Barneys New York + Wide Product Range + Short Movie + Christmas

Recipe:

Direction

Widen brand's appeal through alternative methods

Increase sales via capsule collections during holiday seasons

Increase brand recognition 

Reach new client segments

Strengthen the link between online & offline communication strategies

Mass

So here're some facts regarding this project:

1. For this Christmas, Barneys New York collaborated with The Walt Disney Company in order to create a short film called 'Electric Holiday' featuring our favourite Disney characters on a fashion adventure in Paris, with special guest stars along the way.

2. Barneys New York decided to offer exclusive limited-edition holiday gifts from designer Mickey Mouse merchandise to delicious cookies.

3. Sarah Jessica Parker revealed the film to the public at Barneys New York window unveiling event. 

4. %25 of the retail price of all items in the Electric Holiday collection is donated to American Red Cross disaster relief.

5. The shopping windows had huge screens showing the short film continuously during the holiday season.

So in means of mass, this project had a lot going on: cobranding, exclusive products, charity, celebrity appearance, a short film, impressive visual merchandising, etc. 

Velocity

You can watch the short film 'Electric Holiday' here. It got around 775k views in about 1.5 months.

Let's try to see what effected the velocity of the project:

1. Barneys New York collaborated with WWD on an exclusive. The screenshots from 'Electric Holiday' were revealed in this article.

2. The only blogger to be featured in this film, Bryanboy, blogged about the film here. 

3. The cast was chosen strategically. There was Franca Sozzani from Italy, Emmanuelle Alt from France, Suzy Menkes from UK, and so on. Besides the cast was divided into different categories: designers, photographers, editors, characters, etc.

4. A facebook tab was dedicated to the launch of the film. You can still view it here. 

5. Lady Gaga was included in the cast which helped the virality of the project as her 'little monsters' shared the news on their social media networks. Some of them reuploaded the video on their own Youtube channels, see one example here.

So we see that when doing a special project especially for special periods of the year (Christmas, St. Valentine's, Mother's Day, Father's Day, etc.), it's important to keep a 360 degree approach. Barneys New York picked a great brand for cobranding, chose the cast strategically, created a wide & exclusive product range, did a great teasing strategy prior to the launch, organized an event with a celebrity, aligned the windows with the digital project so linked their online project to the offline one, teamed up with American Red Cross for disaster relief. Barneys New York should be credited for pulling off such a big project with an almost perfect communication strategy.

Trend Alert : Cartoons + Fashion Editorials

You've probably heard it already, print media is suffering from readership losses. People are getting their news online and Twitter doesn't let you share anything that includes more than 140 characters. Therefore, you need a project that that has great 'mass' and high 'velocity' in order to obtain a large digital momentum. Or in other words, if you're dealing with a print magazine, you need an editorial that goes viral.
You are probably right if you tell me that editorials with Kate Moss gets the most retweets but there should also be a limit to the number of editorials you can use her for. So what's your Plan B? Cartoons.

1. Simpsons for HARPER'S BAZAAR
Illustrated by Julius Preite, the Simpsons go to Paris with Linda Evangelista in an editorial of Harper's Bazaar. In one illustration, Homer and kids arrive in Paris with Louis Vuitton trunks. In another one, Marge meets Donatella Versace. Then we see Homer become the student of Karl Lagerfeld and together they dress Marge & Linda in Chanel Haute Couture.
This little project does not only make up the 'mass' but also help the 'velocity' of Harper's Bazaar as thanks to the buzz it created online, more people talked about the magazine. So for the digital momentum of the magazine, this was a very positive move. Well, Harper's Bazaar staff must have thought the same as they replicated the project with The Smurfs. Read below.

2. The Smurfs for HARPER'S BAZAAR
Shot by Jeffrey Westbrook for Harper's Bazaar following the success of The Simpsons editorial, the Smurfette tries on different designer dresses in this editorial. The titles read: 'She's mad for Marc', 'She's lovely in Lanvin', 'Dancing in Dolce' and 'Prancing in Vuitton'. This editorial was a great detail in the marketing strategy for the launch of the movie, The Smurfs.

3. Disney for ELLE Spain
Ulrich Schröder's illustrations turn famous fashion designers into Disney charachters for Elle Spain. Karl Lagerfeld turns into a top dog, Stefano Gabbana & Domenico Dolce into Mickey Mouse & Goofy and Donatella Versace & John Galliano into ducks.
This, again, was a great initiative for increasing the 'velocity' of Elle Spain as pages off the editorial were shared frequently on various social media networks. (Yes, you guessed it right, Tumblr was loaded with these pictures.)

4. The Muppets for INSTYLE
Meet 'The Notorious Pig' as Instyle put it. Shot by the photographer Dan Forbes, Miss Piggy wore Prabal Gurung, Opening Ceremony and Brian Atwood. This editorial was published around the time that the movie, The Muppets, was coming out so it was a good marketing effort to increase the 'velocity' of WOM.

5. Agathe & Seraphine's House for GARAGE
Although this is not a cartoon, it happens to be my favourite editorial in this genre. From the minds of Nick Knight & Dinos Chapman comes a beautiful editorial 'Agathe & Seraphine's House' for Garage magazine, featuring the model Lily Donaldson. The doll wore dresses from Mary Katrantzou, Dolce & Gabbana & Marc Jacobs mixed with various accessories from brands like Meadham Kirchoff, Manolo Blahnik & Louis Vuitton.

These are all global editorials with famous cartoons however this strategy can easily be localized. Example? Well... Asterix for a French magazine, Lupo Alberto for an Italian magazine or Mafalda for any European magazine... Any other suggestions? Which cartoon would you like to see in your local fashion magazine?

Trend Alert: Fashion Brands + Barbie

As mass is important in creating a digital momentum, I want to show some examples of how collaborating with Mattel for Barbie worked for some brands in the past. Maybe it is time that you add Barbie or any other cult to your co-branding projects to take your marketing efforts to a next level.

1. Christian Louboutin's Barbie:

I made the mistake of asking my 5 year old fashionista niece, Sophie, what she wanted for her birthday. The answer was simple: 'The Christian Louboutin Barbie!' yet the quest was not. I was in Paris at the time and although I searched every toy store, none of them had the Louboutin Barbie. Thanks to a bit of research online, I found a website that sold it so I ordered the doll online and after a week, we recieved the super glamorous Louboutin Barbie. The complimentary letter from the seller read: 'For adult collectors.' I got into thinking: when did Barbie stop being just a toy and turned into a collector's item? Ok, yes, I was behind collectors trends, now I know.

To the eye that has no background info on Mattel's innovative marketing efforts, this seems like a subtle collaboration between a shoe designer and a toy brand. But it's more than that. Mattel has a website dedicated to collectors called Barbie Collector. Under the category 'Designers', you see that there are brands like Versace, Christian Dior, Juicy Couture, Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang, etc. who have collaborated with Mattel in the past to create one-of-a-kind dolls.

But what's more interesting is the series of dolls created by smaller brands like The Blonds, Philipp Plein, tokidoki, Tarina Tarantino that are sold out but can still be viewed on the website. This can be an interesting way for smaller, newer brands to reach new client segments, increase brand recognition and widen a brand's appeal online. An emerging brand has to keep in mind that it is not always easy to increase fans and followers in short spans of time but by doing these kinds of special collaborations, they can speed up the process. Barbie has 6.5 million fans on Facebook, 146k followers on Twitter and 57k subscribers on Youtube. You can see the Philipp Plein doll's pictures in this album back when it was first launched.

Some of the brands that should consider such a collaboration are Rebecca Minkoff, Charlotte Olympia, Paula Cademartori, MSGM, Mary Katrantzou and Erdem.
PS: There's an album that is dedicated to Dolce & Gabbana's fashion show on Barbie's Facebook that you can view here.

2. Frankie Morello loves Barbie:

 

I was in London when I saw the invitation in my mailbox so sadly, I couldn't make it to this instore event but I had a chance to see the pictures from the night Frankie Morello organized in collaboration with Barbie to celebrate Christmas. The doll was created Magia 2000 founded by the artistic duo, Mario Paglioni & Gianni Grossi.

I had a professor from HEC for marketing who had once shared a very interesting tip with us in means of product innovation: 'Don't reinvent the wheel. Take any product and pick of the operations: add, subtract, multiply or divide.' In this case, Frankie Morello enlarged the Barbie and dressed the doll in one of their creations for the occasion.

 
3. Barbie Suitcase by The Blonds:

I already discussed the Barbie doll they created for Barbie Collector above. This time, I want to underline how Mattel did product placement & cross-channel marketing using The Blonds fashion show.
There was a Barbie Suitcase in The Blonds' Spring 2011 fashion show. So not only The Blonds created an exclusive doll for Barbie's 50th Anniversary to be sold on Barbie Collector but Mattel made sure to include their signature dolls in The Blonds' glamorous fashion show. (Please note that I'm commenting on these marketing initiatives from an outsider's POV so if it wasn't Mattel to include these dolls in the show, I'm not to know. This is what it seems like to me, #thatsall.)

Oh, and I'm not even starting on how they dressed Katy Perry in an exact Barbie outfit in collaboration with The Blonds. See for yourself here.

4. Dolce & Gabbana's Madonna Barbie for Swide.com:

Does anyone remember 'The Doll Who Wanted To Be Madonna' articles on Swide.com? With the new design of Dolce & Gabbana's online magazine, it's not possible to reach the archives but hopefully they'll fix the bug and I'll be able to show some of these images to you.
From what I can remember, they had asked Magia 2000 to customize a Barbie doll in a sequined Dolce & Gabbana dress. Then Swide team had used the doll to write weekly articles about a doll who was obsessed with Madonna and who moved to Milan to become like her. There's still an in depth article on this marketing initiative on Luxury Daily which you can read here.

5. Barbie's Fiat 500:

It's not only fashion brands that get in line to collaborate with Mattel for Barbie but also brands from the automotive industry. Fiat 500 had created a life-style Barbie car, a customized Fiat 500, to celebrate Barbie's 50th Anniversary. Mattel, in return, had added created a toy version of this car to add to Barbie's lifestyle product offerings.
I remember, always thanks to my niece Sophie, that this toy was quite a big success as I had to include my name in a waiting list back in 2009 to get my hands on one.

6. Colette for Barbie:

I'm including this in order to show you that collaborations with Barbie aren't limited to creating products. Colette's special event for Barbie's 50th Anniversary is a good example of how retailers can collaborate with brands of this sort in a creative manner.
For the occasion, Colette created a 'Barbie Room' showcasing Jeremy Scott's collection of Barbie clothing, MP3 players, Margaux Lange accessories, Stila make-up, Dylan's Candy Bar sweets as well as limited items by Married to Mob, Uslu Airlines, Bless, Linda Farrow, Alexis Mabille and Goyard.

Trend Alert: Andrew Yang + Dolls

I recently discussed how Louis Vuitton integrates dolls into their digital marketing strategy. I just found out about the dollmaker Andrew Yang who has been creating 27' rag dolls for important fashion and luxury brands since 2008. As dolls seems to be a trend that still continues to pop up in digital marketing, I wanted to refresh our memories about Yang's interesting projects.
Andrew Yang's creations can be a great inspiration to see how you can strengthen the mass of your digital projects in order to increase your digital momentum.

1. Valley of Dolls for Block Magazine:

The Block Magazine commissioned dollmaker Andrew Yang to interpret ten looks from the Spring 2010 fashion shows. There were dolls wearing creations of Lanvin, Givenchy, Gareth Pugh, Marc Jacobs, Comme des Garçons, Rick Owens, Ann Demeulemeester, Katie Eary and Proenza Shouler.
I think this was the moment in which Yang attracted the attention of luxury brands as the pictures of these dolls were quite viral in the blogosphere.

 














2. Miriam Morello for Frankie Morello:

Frankie Morello commissioned Yang to create 14 'vampire' dolls inspired by their FW 2010 Womenswear collection. The brand anticipated one of the these dolls calling it Miriam Morello, inspired by Susan Sarandon's character in the movie 'The Hunger'. Miriam Morello then became the blogger of the brand and posted frequently on Frankly. After a few months of blogging from the doll's point of view, the brand organized an instore event during Milan Fashion Week, showcasing all of 14 dolls Yang had created for Frankie Morello.
The blog is still active here. But the doll is not using its personal Facebook account anymore. The cover story it earned in Italy is available here.


3. VFNO 2010 Dolls for Barney's:

Barney's commissioned Andrew Yang to create two Vogue dolls for VFNO 2010 in New York: one of Anna Wintour and the other of Grace Coddington. According to an article on T Magazine, the dolls were auctined off on charitybuzz.com

4. Kouklitas Dolls for JOYCE:
To celebrate Joyce's 40th Anniversary, Andrew Yang was commissioned to create over 60 dolls for Joyce's Shanghai & Hong Kong boutiques. All dolls were on sale and the media was quite interested in interviewing the young dollmaker during the event.
There's even a video summing up the whole project.

JOYCE Doll Dreams from NEON LIGHTHOUSE on Vimeo.

5. Christmas Windows for Lafayette:

Andrew Yang became a sort of go-to person for dazzling store windows with a portfolio like Barney's, Joyce and finally Lafayette. Galeries Lafayette launched their 'Nöel Rock 'n Mode' windows in collaboration with Andrew Yang back on November 2011. Lafayette shared a video of the windows that earned around 3k views on Youtube.

6. Lancome's Porcelain, Golden & Star Doll:

One of the most recent & interesting collaborations of Andrew Yang is this one with Lancome. He teamed up with the beauty giant and created a trio of Kouklitas dolls.
Celebrating the Lancome's Christmas make-up collection 'Happy Holidays', Yang presented three collectable dolls for the occasion: Alyssa, the Porcelain Doll... Isabella, the Golden Doll... And Camille, the Star Doll...

Case #3: Dsquared / Fetish Ginger Man

 

Main Ingredients:
Gingerbread Cookies + Dsquared + Anna Dello Russo + Jou Jou Villeroy + KitchenAid

Recipe:

Direction
Strengthen the link between online & offline communication strategies
Reach new client segments

Mass
Dsquared twins, Dean and Dan Caten, partnered up with Kitchen Aid and invited a group of influential journalists & bloggers to bake gingerbread cookies for Christmas. There was also the famous cake designer Letizia Grella to help the guests with their creations. To spice things up, every guest was asked to create one 'fetish' gingerbread man.
There were Dsquared products scattered around the huge kitchen they used for the event, as well as KitchenAid equipments.

Velocity
It seemed to me that this was rather 'an offline event' rather than a digital project. But thanks to Anna Dello Russo and Eleonora Carisi from Jou Jou Villeroy, the pictures from the event were leaked on Twitter and Instagram. As the theme was interesting, there were a few retweets of funny cookies. I searched on Google if there was any blog post about the night but the only thing I found was this video which sums up the whole thing and this post on Jou Jou Villeroy.
So, the project wasn't viral but it was interesting and could have made a great social media project if only there was some sort of app or something to create one's own 'fetish gingerbread man'.

Trend Alert: Louis Vuitton + Dolls

I've made my point clear in my first post. The digital momentum of a project (or of a brand) is the product of its mass and velocity.
If you remember, I had also told you that it would take more time & energy for a car to reach a higher speed, therefore a larger momentum. What does it mean in digital marketing? That it takes time for brands to create authentic voices online and that they should accumulate a series of similar projects in their portfolio to create consistency in their 'mass'.
This is exactly what Louis Vuitton has been doing with dolls for a while now: accumulating projects of a similar nature in order to create consistency & coherency in their digital marketing strategy.

Let's refresh our memory & take a look at Louis Vuitton's use of 'the dolls trend' in digital marketing.

1. Walking in Fabrizio Viti's Shoes:

Part 1: Louis Vuitton's shoe style director, Viti has been collecting dolls since he was 3 years old and today he owns a collection of 500 pieces in total. In the short interview he does for New & Now, he reveals the importance of dolls in the creative process saying that he uses them as a canvas for experiementation and once he did a custom shoe for one particular dolls that he ended up liking so much that he enlargened it to a human scale. Needless to say, that shoe was the season's must have.
Part 2: In the second part of the interview, the brand explains how the shoe department is connected to the world of dolls as the workshop is Fiesso D'Artico in Italy is not only responsible for the creation of Louis Vuitton's shoes but also of fabricating their miniature versions for Fabrizio Viti's private doll collection. The article's supported by a fun, viral stop motion animation starring Barbie with different LV shoes. The video earned around 111k views on Youtube.

2. LOVE Magazine Cover

One of the eight covers for LOVE Magazine's Fall 2010 issue was Buela The Mannequin, a doll lent by Louis Vuitton's shoe style director Fabrizio Viti. The cover was shot by Mert & Marcus. The doll was referred to as 'The Louis Vuitton doll' in various articles (one example here).

3.  Le Bal du Siècle for Lafayette:

Galeries Lafayette in Paris asked Louis Vuitton to dress its Christmas windows in order to mark its 100th anniversary. The theme was 'the Ball of the Century' and the end result featured dancing puppet animals, hand-painted dolls dressed up in Louis Vuitton, musical instruments and LV trunks all inspired by the world of travel. The windows were photographed by many bloggers who got in line to dedicate a post to this initiative (see one example here). The brand shared a 'behind the scenes' video with their fans on different social media networks which earned 45k views on Youtube.




4. The Louis Vuitton Paper Dolls:

The brand combined their RTW icons with the SS 13 collection to show how pieces can be mixed and matched to invent new outfits. Four looks styled by Hersov are presented as downloadable paper dolls designed by the illustrator Kerrie Hess on the brand's New & Now site. There's also a video showing Hersov at work on Youtube.
The fans are supposed to print these dolls, create different looks and share them on their social media networks with the hashtag #LVMixMatch. Louis Vuitton will share their favourite entries on Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

One more question: do you remember who Louis Vuitton dressed for 2012 Bafta Awards? Yes, Miss Piggy. Can't remember? Read here.

Case #2: Louis Vuitton / #LVExperience

 

Main Ingredients:

Paris + Louis Vuitton + Cup of Couple +Kate Loves Me + Amlul + Lovely Pepa + #LVEXPERIENCE

 

Recipe:

 

Direction

Honour handcraft & increase perception of quality

Create a lifestyle around the brand

 

Mass

Louis Vuitton does many projects to introduce us to their history and brand values. This #LVExperience in Asnieres is one of them where we get to see the Maison de Famille thanks to a team of influential bloggers. We discover the house where Louis Vuitton lived, the history of the brand and how it was born, the craftmanship behind all the trunks, etc. I believe the project was for the Spanish audience as all the bloggers included in this project are Spanish.

There was a dedicated hashtag, #LVExperience, to keep all the tweets and instagrammed pictures under one topic so that it was easier for us, the consumer, to see the experience from three different points of views.

 

Velocity

The three bloggers who took part in this project were: Pelayo Diaz from Kate Loves Me with 32k followers, Gala Gonzalez from Amlul with 78k followers, Cup of Couple with 5k followers  and Alexandra from Lovely Pepa with 21k followers on Twitter.

They all instagrammed and tweeted their experience live, using the tag #LVExperience.

Following the experience, they all blogged about their visit to the Maison de Famille. (You can read these here, here, here and here.) The guys behind Cup of Couple even created a video of their experience which is fun to watch.

 

This is not the first time LV is doing such a project. I think there is a greater global strategy behind this as they had done quite the same project in Italy last year with Chiara Ferragni from The Blonde Salad, Veronica Ferraro from The Fashion Fruit, Leonardo Iuffrida & Alessandro Mancarella from The Real Nob and Alessandro Airo from Little Snob Thing. The brand is good at localizing their global strategy and using local influencers to increase the impact.