The Retail PlannerSeptember 2014

Beacon shopping

September 20, 2014 / alison

Beacon retail has been gently gathering momentum as a phygital trend to watch in 2014. There are developments from luxury to food sectors, as retailers figure out the benefits of sending out targeted, location-specific marketing messages to consumers’ smartphones while they browse stores.

Several September launches have helped promote the latest opt-in shopping apps, that rely on retailers to install small location-aware devices and can communicate with consumers’ smartphones via low-energy Bluethooth signals.

Luxury Beacons

Luxury and retail brands are leading the fore with gamified or interactive platforms, that learn consumer preferences the more they are used.

Kenzo has collaborated with Paris department store Printemps for a dedicated two-month pop-up in September and October, and as part of the partnership the luxury house created its first mobile app: Kenzo Loves Printemps. Downloading the app before visiting the pop-up, allows users to browse through the exclusive pieces as well as learning about the David Lynch inspired AW14 collection. Once in-store app users can try the interactive game to search out letters spelling Kenzo to enter a competition for collection prizes. The app also uses Beacon technology alerting passersby to daily activities within the Kenzo pop-up space.

Regent Street is arguably one of London’s premier tourist shopping destinations and so it’s no surprise that its owner, The Crown Estate, has installed Beacon technology up and down the street at over 100 stores. During September the Regent Street shopping app was advertised on buses in the area, and after personalizing the app Tinder-style with swipes up for yes, down for no, users can shop exclusive promotions from stores including Burberry, Brooks Brothers and Anthropologie, receiving relevant push notifications as they near their favourite stores. The Crown Estate was the first major shopping destination to install beacons in the UK.

Regent Street uses beacon technology at 100 stores

Department store deployment

Department stores are also waking up to the buzz of Beacon technology and they’re partnering with shopping apps that consumers are already using for heightened awareness and convenience.

In one of the biggest Beacon roll-outs to date, Macy’s announced it is installing the technology across 4000 stores, as part of a slew of omni-channel strategy updates.

The news follows a year-long trial that the department store group has been doing with the location-based shopping platform Shopkick. ‘This is the breakthrough for iBeacon,’ said Cyriac Roeding, CEO and co-founder of Shopkick in an interview with GeoMarketing magazine. ‘By a factor of 20x, this is the largest implementation [of beacons] worldwide,’ he added.

Similarly Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) is eyeing Beacon technology deployment across its portfolio of Canadian and US stores (including Lord & Taylor, Hudson’s Bay and Saks), partnering with loyalty shopping app SnipSnap. What’s interesting here is that as with Saks and Shopkick, the HBC Beacon experiment utilizes a third-party app to target shoppers with promotional messages from up to seven different departments that are able to trigger the Beacon push notifications at say, Lord & Taylor.

‘Think about it, and you realize that beaconing has been the missing piece in the whole mobile-shopping puzzle,’ says Chuck Martin, a mobile marketing consultant, writing for the Harvard Business Review.

The mannequins are watching

As consumers become used to the idea of walking into stores outfitted with Beacon technology to receive relevant discounts and even ‘abandoned cart’ product reminder messages on their mobiles, now it’s smart mannequins that are getting the tech treatment.

London based start-up Iconeme has created VMBeacon, especially for fashion retailers to install inside mannequins to enhance the customer experience in-store. These ‘smart dummies’ can ‘give customers much more of an experience when they’re shopping,’ according to the company’s co-founder Jonathan Berlin, in an interview with Bloomberg. The VMBeacons can transmit information about the clothes on display – such as price, photos, description, even SKU location on the shop floor – direct to mobile devices within 100m when customers have the app turned on. UK retailers House of Fraser, Bentalls, and Hawes and Curtis have been trialling the smart dummies fitted with VMBeacon software since August.

Mall rats rush in

Beacon technology works well when there are multiple brands, creating a multitude of promotional shopping messages, in a defined geographical location.

Now malls are following Regent Street’s lead and recognizing Beacons as a sideline retailer revenue stream. US mall operators Rouse Properties and Simon Malls are both in early stages of rolling out Beacon hardware to capitalize on the sponsored content its retailer portfolio will need to send out, while potential customers are shopping at the mall. Simon Malls is installing geo-location software in central areas at 200 of its malls, utilising its own app for Beacon messaging extensions.

Experimenting with Beacon at 34 locations, Rouse Properties’ executive VP of leasing says selling that digital space to advertisers in different packages is the primary driver for the roll-out, according to a report on Fashionista.

Travel retail will be another area where beacons will be useful to consumers. Virgin Atlantic is one of the first airlines to use beacon technology at its Heathrow Clublounge for airside passengers to receive boarding passes and tax-free shopping promotions on their smartphone, according to iBeacon Insider.

Virgin Atlantic Clublounge at Heathrow Airport uses beacons

Event marketing

Major League Baseball and Coachella are just two US entertainment events that have experimented with beaconing campaigns in 2014, proving that the technology has potential to break away from retail environments into public events, where large crowds can pick up branded and marketing messages from sponsors.

The more consumers interact with Beacons at their favourite sporting and music events, the more targeted their promotional messaging will be, says Doug Thompson, publisher of BEEKn, an industry website devoted to the technology. ‘Your experiences will change the more you visit a venue,’ he says in an interview on LS:N Global. In the future, a merger between iBeacons and big data will result in messages that are more relevant to the individual. ‘Your experiences will change the more you visit a venue,’ he says. ‘Physical environments will change too – everything from digital signs to lighting or even what the band says on stage.’

The future of Beacons?

While Beacon technology is approaching mainstream adoption by retailers towards the end of 2014, consumers are yet to show such enthusiasm. Kenzo has nailed it for a millennial audience via a gamified interactive element to its Beacon-enhanced mobile app, while the strategy by major department stores – to utilise third party loyalty apps – is a smart approach and targets consumers with promotions they’ll like on a platform they’re already used to.

A digital retail safari in London for LFW, September is fashion month

September 10, 2014 / alison

As London Fashion Week kicks off, London’s retail scene doesn’t disappoint – check out a host of new physical meets digital store happenings from East to West.

Topshop Oxford Circus & the #LFW Instagram window

Coinciding with its LFW Unique runway show on 14 September, Topshop is launching its most democratic, ‘socially accessible’ fashion show to date. Not least as the results will be seen live and direct in a specially commissioned ‘digital mosaic’ window installation at the Oxford Circus store, created by one of my favourite creative duos Hellicar & Lewis.

Topshop’s social curation interactive window for SS15

Via partnerships with Facebook and Instagram, this phygital window display will livestream social content from the LFW Topshop show space in Kings Cross to passersby and online followers of the hashtag #topshopwindow.

Five popular Instagrammers as well as show-goers snapping streetstyle or selfies will be feeding into the window’s pixelated content, that can also be manipulated by waving or gesturing in front of the window at the Oxford Circus store.

Ever the democratizer, Topshop is fuelling the rise of social-commerce at LFW. Adding an interactive element to its themed window display is inclusive and blurs the lines between physical and online even further.

Happy birthday to DSM!

Dover Street Market celebrates 10 years of avant-garde designer creativity this month, and with it comes a brand new social media strategy. After a decade of curating and experimenting with fashion’s great, bold and new, the original luxury department store has launched a visual-language focused Instagram account to tie in with its big anniversary campaign for AW14. It’s a significant digital move for the social media shy retail brand that now operates stores in London, New York and Tokyo. The Insta posts are guest edited this month by Another magazine’s digital editor Laura Bradley and champion a continuous creative aesthetic that offers followers one eye on the physical store and one on the overall creative vision. The perfect hybrid of past and future, summed up by the new hashtag: #TheNextTenYears.

Dover Street Market, London 10th anniversary facade

The physical celebrations in-store are worth a visit too. I love the pop-up market stalls, selling DSM branded trinkets and collectibles that are dotted throughout the five floors. Highlights of this season’s Tachiagari seasonal updates include new concepts by Simone Rocha, Loewe, JW Anderson, Sacai and a new Nike Lab with exclusive kicks. There’s the first overseas outpost for the CDG Good Design Shop, full of utilitarian homewares and vintage collection classics from the Comme archive. Louis Vuitton and DSM collaborated on the luxury brand’s first ephemeral boutique (new word for pop-up?) to showcase Nicholas Ghesquiere’s first collection for the house.

Thankfully founders Rei Kawakubo and husband Adrian Joffe have addressed the age-old problem of what to do about changing rooms with some truly amazing collaborations. There are giant walk-in ‘drop-boxes’ designed by Peter Blake, SC Artroom Milan and Christian Astuguevieille, who’s Waterfall box is covered in large white and yellow rope tassels for pure decadence.

DSM 10th Anniversary fitting room by Christian Astuguevieille titled ‘The Waterfall’ image courtesy of Mark Blower

It’s interesting to see how the worlds of fashion and art continue to collide at DSM (London’s Frieze art fair is the store’s highest grossing sales period), now with the added global influence that social media brings to the equation.

The World of Rick Owens at Selfridges

Another celebratory collaboration in London comes from US designer, Rick Owens, who is currently visualized in giant torso form above Selfridges iconic entrance. You can’t miss the 25m statue complete with flame-lit torch, created by Doug Jennings and installed to mark Owens’ 20^th anniversary as a designer.

The department store has launched The World of Rick Owens in its WonderRoom concept space on the ground floor and associated Orchard Street windows. The space is a fetishistic ode to Owens, that has more of an exhibition mood than simply retail. There is a pulsating LED screen on one wall – an installation by Japanese artist Ryoji Ikeda – that combines light and audio frequency for an immersive experience. There are also books, films and music curated by the designer on display, alongside the 20-piece collection that has an ‘elemental’ theme according to the designer.

But it’s the tech-infused, thematic windows that I love in particular. The corner window includes two flat screens projecting the Rick Owens brand name in flames, set against a black staircase where fog is pumped out towards the top, for an eerie and sinister feel.

Owen’s other windows take inspiration from the 1923 silent movie of Richard Strauss’s opera Salome. One features a model, Terry Ann as Salome with back-lit slits for eyes and a steady stream of black ink pouring from her mouth, while scenes from the film are played across her forehead. Nextdoor is a picture of another character from the film, Edouard as Jokanaan, whose head will end on a silver platter for the ever demanding Salome. The windows are a reference to the new Everyman Cinema that Selfridges has just launched and where Salome will be playing later on this month.

Rick Owens, Master of the Elements, is one of twelve iconic designers contributing exclusive designs as part of the store’s major AW14 marketing campaign, The Masters. I love the other-wordly and specially commissioned film by Marie Schuller for SHOWStudio, that comprises a collection of vignettes that portray the different designers’ universes, yet are visually connected. Watch it here: SHOWstudio X Selfridges – The Masters by Marie Schuller.

Jean-Paul Gaultier is another designer celebrated in The Masters line-up at Selfridges. An elaborate Selfie Station created by retail set-designer Gary Card is billed as a digital experience for customers who wish to share the JPG space-age theme for his Master of Expression collaboration. The NASA-inspired station features a moon-buggy that projects images of visitors to multiple screens that are instantly sharable on social media.

JPG selfie station at Selfridges

As physical retail becomes more fleetingly experiential, brands are looking to inspiring and innovative interactive solutions to entice customers in. These Selfridges Masters collaborations are great examples of how creativity and digital are converging in the retail space.

Shoe Heaven at Harrods

Harrods has opened London’s largest shoe department (officially swiping Selfridges’ crown) and while it’s not a digital environment, it is giant in scale and more like a huge mall full of shoes up on the fifth floor. Use the Harrods in-store navigation app to find your way around (it’s that big). There are dedicated boutiques for a host of luxury footwear names from Giuseppe Zanotti, Christian Louboutin, Charlotte Olympia and Manolo Blahnik even has an exclusive staircase to his private suite-style salon.

To help drive footfall Harrods has launched a digital campaign via a fun mobile game called Stiletto Wars (think CandyCrush meets a never ending Kurt Geiger lookbook), downloadable through the Harrods mag-tail app. Fastest footwear matchers can send their scores to a leaderboard to win prizes including gift cards and VIP shopping experiences at Harrods. The best bit is that the game will feature in a giant interactive screen in the store windows on Brompton Road until the end of September.

Harrods Stiletto Wars game

Gamified retail: a little bit of digital goes a long way.

Karl Lagerfeld’s selfie iPads

Opened earlier this year, the Karl Lagerfeld flagship on Regent Street is one of the best examples I’ve seen of digitized changing rooms. Yes, it’s a #selfie-based idea but this is where a simple execution works the best.

iPads are placed on the wall in each changing room with an image of Karl himself taking your photo. Obviously customers press the camera button. Et voila, the selfie phenomenon working hard for a brand and playing into the favourite pastime of its core millennial audience – sharing content across social media. There are screens dotted around the store to display look book images and add to the general digital feel to the store.

iPads for selfie loving millennials at Karl Lagerfeld’s new Regent Street store

The iPads are not to encourage selfies, says Candice Collomb, Karl Lagerfeld’s digital manager. ‘The purpose of the iPad is to create a digital experience in the store, and encourage our customers to share their outfits and talk about their time in the store on their social networks,’ she told me. ‘There is a photo booth in the changing rooms, it’s fun and entertaining. Customers love experimenting with it, they play with the different filters and share images with their community,’ she says. One of the most popular digital elements is the guest book, where customers can message Karl and ask for advice or submit entries for ‘pic of the week’. ‘Technology plays an important role in the store. It is used to increase brand visibility on social media and helps to create a strong bond between the consumer and sales person,’ says Collomb who adds the data is stored via cloud technology and ‘heightens the feeling of being part of a ‘club’ for customers and the sales team’.

Selfie so good – not gimmicky, just useful and social.

Buzzing beacons on Regent Street

While you are on Regent Street make sure you download the dedicated shopping app that links your smartphone into the street’s new beacon system, that uses low-energy bluetooth technology for close-range connections. It can recognize when you are near a favourite shop, and send personalized promotions. Much has been said about beacons transforming the retail landscape, and if you take the time to swipe yes or no for your preferred brands (Tinder-style) then you only get push notifications for stuff you are interested in.

Regent Street is one of the first major retail destinations to launch a dedicated beacon shopping app, and with just over 100 stores to choose from it’s a great place to beta test the future of physical meets digital shopping.

Beauty-tech emporiums: Burberry, Dior & Chanel

For the full-on luxury beauty brand experience head to Covent Garden. The tourist shopping haven has become the go-to retail destination for luxury brands to open dedicated beauty emporiums – I’m talking about Chanel, Dior and Burberry, that all opened in the Plaza central area. These bijou boutiques are aspirational brand statements where Millennials flock to try out their favourite luxury brands’ latest nail, eye, cheek and lip colours – at prices they can afford.

Burberry Beauty, Covent Garden

Talking of appealing to Millennials, this trio of stores are digitized to the hilt and scream Insta-ready photo as soon as you walk in. At Burberry there are colour coordinated iPads organised as a central chandelier, while at Chanel fun gif-style animated videos play on screens above the beauty bar and at Dior it’s interactive mirrors that grab your attention as soon as you walk in.

Chanel Beauty, Covent Garden

Luxury brands are having fun with physical-digital displays instead of static VM. With beauty as their new focus, brands are enhancing the immersive shopping experience and ensuring an interactive and inclusive shopper journey.

Opening Ceremony at Ace Hotel

Only Opening Ceremony was man enough for the job of hosting a multi-brand designer store at the new Ace Hotel, Shoreditch. Tapping into the local zeitgeist and inspiring global hipsters with culturally relevant, creative products are shared brand values for both retailer and hotelier. So this partnership is an intelligent pairing, not to mention symbiotic.

Opening Ceremony at Ace Hotel, Shoreditch

The pop-up OC space is located just next door to Ace Hotel and its locally run florist, coffee shop, juice bar Hoi Polloi restaurant and collaborators’ design shop. Designed by RCA alumni Max Lamb, who took a suitably brutalist design approach to the interior and flexi fittings, there are Lamb’s signature touches of raw materials and hand-crafted design elements throughout the small space. For the hipster fashion offer, OC has chosen a handful of local London designers (currently enjoying New Gen status at LFW) – including Marques’ Almeida and Faustine Steinmetz as well as international names such as Kenzo and Maison Martin Margiela.

This is a clever collaboration that has synergy at its heart – both parties celebrate local creativity and talent.

Digital runways: the evolution of live-streaming at NYFW & LFW

September 8, 2014 / alison

The fashion show is dead. Long live the interactive, digital brand experience now taking place during New York and London fashion weeks, where consumers, influencers and their collective social media clout are the preferred global audience.

It’s no coincidence that several brands are using these respective (outdated) fashion week events as digital springboards to launch democratic, social-commerce driven campaigns for buy-it-now capsule collections. And for a few digital innovators without an insta-commerce agenda, the runway show has evolved beyond live-streaming, to become an interactive and highly sharable event that puts consumer participation front of mind and at the fingertips of many.

New York’s multi-media memo

In New York, over the last week we’ve seen the traditional runway show outgrow its true purpose, with a raft of designers going all out with immersive, tech-rich and experiential happenings.

With a social reach agenda as priority, Tommy Hilfiger engaged a number of non-fashion experts from the worlds of travel, architecture and photography, to document their personal reviews of his runway show, live and direct through a dedicated social campaign dubbed First Timers. The reviewers posted to their own social media platforms and the results were aggregated on a section of the brand’s website called The Conversation. Building on the brand’s democratic approach to sharing its show assets with online fans, this latest campaign adds another layer of expertise and engagement.

Polo Ralph Lauren SS15 at NYFW

Amping up the digital quotient to huge scale proportions, Ralph Lauren put on a 4D light show in New York’s Central Park, calling it a logical next step in the brand’s progressive techno-savvy marketing strategy. Utilising a four-story high water screen as the backdrop for the newly launched Polo Women runway show, virtual models walked among New York’s famous landmarks such as Brooklyn Bridge and the High Line (CGI meets hologram – so very tech!). All this digi-tainment is of course ideal Instagram-bait for the Techanista fashion crowd, who duly shared the Polo4D hashtag and show video: generously.

A more intimate, but equally mesmerisming multi-media show came from Gareth Pugh, who decamped to New York this season for a theatrical presentation in collaboration with Lexus’s Design Disrupted platform. The designer told Dazed Digital he wanted to push the boundaries of an ‘interactive presentation’. So contained within three separate, dark chambers at Pier 36, he mixed gesture-responsive video, writhing dance moves and a tornado like finale that fused folkore inspiration somewhere (lost?) between the physical and digital worlds only Pugh truly knows.

Gareth Pugh SS15 for Lexus Design Disrupted project

Wearables have quickly become the buzz of NYFW. One of the key players in this nascent fash-tech space is Rebecca Minkoff, who launched a new collection of wearables intelligent jewellery during her show. ‘We wanted to go after wearables in a different way,’ Uri Minkoff, CEO told WWD. As the brand looks at this fashion-function mix, it’s really where their customer is living, he says.

Rebecca Minkoff wearable technology notification bracelet

Less successful but still firmly in the interactive show bracket, was Minkoff’s experiment with a capsule range of dresses using bio-tech fabrics, highlighted on the runway by the use of 3D glasses.

Rebecca Minkoff SS15

One noteable exception to the exponential growth of digital fashion week presentations this season, is Opening Ceremony. The OC designers Humberto Leon and Carol Lim took a digital detox approach this season and chose what the LA Times referred to as a ‘playsentation’ called 100% Lost Cotton – a play re-enacting the life of a fashion show co-written by Jonah Hill and Spike Jonze.

Opening Ceremony SS15 ‘playsentation’ during NYFW

The 45 min play was in fact a parady of a fashion show (from first casting sessions to closing runway), that explored contributing relationships and the highs and lows involved in creating one. Smartphones and cameras were banned and in the suitably theatrical surroundings of the Metropolitan Opera House, the cast (including Elle Fanning as well as models to actually present the collection) walked and talked their way through a script that the designers say was inspired by their carefree, youthful days of the 90s when they first met, gatecrashing the swimming pool parties in suburban LA. Actually the entire idea, execution and irreverent brand statement resonated well. And in a season awash with digital firsts, this backward glance made you stop to think for a touch longer than usual. We’ll gloss over the nod to future-facing tech with OC’s debut collection of wearables, a collaboration with Intel, that made an appearance during the play.

London does Insta-commerce:

As the fash pack moves to London, there is more of a click-to-buy mood about the social-media led catwalk events planned for LFW.

Ever the democratiser, Topshop is hosting its ‘most socially accessible fashion show to date’ on Sunday. Via partnerships with Facebook and Instagram, the Topshop online community can instantly shop exclusive pieces from the new SS15 collection, as well as curate their own content from the show experience along with five influential Instagrammers who will populate the Topshop feed. All this social content will be visible, live and direct through a specially commissioned ‘digital mosaic’ triple-screen window installation at the Oxford Circus store, created by one of my favourite set design duos Hellicar & Lewis. It goes without saying that not only is the phygital window display interactive to passersby, this clever 360 degree social content campaign will influence how Topshop’s growing global stores merchandise their stores during LFW.

Topshop’s social curation interactive window for LFW SS15

In only its second outing at LFW, Hunter Original is dipping its rubber boot toe into the world of geo-locative video clips via a live catwalk collaboration with tech start-up Grabyo. During the show on Saturday, Grabyo will offer ten clips of real-time video content via Twitter, that can be curated, depending on where the brand’s followers are located. By following #Beahunteroriginal, someone in Los Angeles might see a short clip featuring festival gear, while a London viewer will probably be targeted with outdoor or rainwear more in keeping with the British climate. The Grabyo content is optimised for mobile viewing and immediately offers something more engaging and relevant to Hunter Original’s live-streaming global show audience.

Hunter Original SS15 at LFW

Lastly, Henry Holland is pushing the boundaries of how physical and digital meet this season, with another click-to-buy initiative, this time via the virtual e-commerce fit specialist Metail. The designer’s House of Holland show will be live-streamed on a dedicated site: where his online fan base can literally try before they buy, utilizing the Metail technology that allows anyone to create a digital MeModel of themselves after inputting simple height, weight and bra size measurements. This digital collaboration is functional over fluffy and has the power to educate Holland’s customers – a useful tool, especially when amplified by the designer’s huge social following.

Finally, it wouldn’t be LFW without talking about what Burberry‘s digital plans are this season. To coincide with the launch of its new fragrance MyBurberry, the luxury brand is going all out to offer fans their own personalised bottle, featuring a suite of digital customisation elements across both social and retail platforms.

By logging on to MyBurberry.com, smartphone users can ‘order’ a virtual bottle with their initials engraved, and see it beamed across giant digital billboards in London’s Piccadilly Circus and New York’s Meatpacking District. There’s also a personalised retail campaign at Sephora and Selfridges, that allows customers to purchase their initialised bottles ,while online, interactive advertising banners encourage fans to create virtual bottles that are instantly shared across social media.

For the show on Monday, Burberry is one of only a few early adopters of Twitter’s beta ‘buy it’ button, that launched last week. Now Burberry’s global Twitter audience can instantly buy the nail colours featured on the runway (sneak peek below). Twitter-commerce has truly arrived.

Ask Alison: what does it all mean?

This fashion week season, digital has truly come to the fore. The concept of live-streaming is evolving and changing with our always-on visual-language culture. Brands are increasingly preferring to democratize the show experience where Insta-commerce is woven into the execution. In an age where ubiquitous selfies know no bounds, social is the fastest moving media that is even recasting how retail operates.

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Monthly Archives: September 2014

Beacon shopping

A digital retail safari in London for LFW, September is fashion month