Smartzer x HALSTON

This week saw us go live with luxury American fashion label, Halston Heritage. After meeting the team during our time in New York earlier this year as part of the Fashion Tech Lab, we have worked with the retailer to make their latest campaign video completely shoppable and interactive.

The video showcases the latest Fall 2016 collection, featuring a stunning ensemble of dresses perfect for the upcoming festive season. Using our interactive video technology, Halston made their content clickable.

As with other campaign videos that we have made interactive, we really feel that the content itself benefits and becomes far more engaging. It sparks increased interest amongst the consumers watching and aims to increase conversion.

We were so pleased to work with such an iconic American brand who are constantly mixing iconic styles and modern designs in luxe fabrics with a hugely varied product range.

This collaboration came about as a result of our introductions at the New York Fashion Tech Lab programme. We’ve got an entire blog post which can provide more context on this and what it means for us as a company. But essentially, we spent 3 months Stateside to take part in an extremely exciting and rewarding incubator programme. As a result, we got to work with HALSTON on making this video entirely shoppable. We’re very pleased with how it looks, and we hope you all enjoy clicking away which you can do HERE.

If you'd like to see more of our previous videos, we update our homepage with all our collaborations and be sure to check our Twitter to be kept updated on everything we're up to.

#HELLOYOU with M&S

This week saw us go live on more videos with high street retailer, Marks & Spencer. We were so thrilled to work with them again and really appreciate them seeing the value of shoppable video for their content.

The two videos in question are from a new campaign, which is lead by the hashtag #HELLOYOU. The focus of this content was around finding the perfect pair of jeans;

“We all know that great jeans can be the difference between a good day or a great day and finding that elusive ‘perfect pair’ can often be tricky. We want to make jeans fun again and help you with your own denim story.”

Six different women try to overcome their hang-ups with procuring the ideal pair of jeans and with the help of the M&S stylists, they seem to succeed. The women then model their new looks in the video. The outfits were fully clickable. So, with one tap of the mouse, the consumer is presented with every product shown in a customised group pop-up. This makes purchasing the product even easier as they can find the route to the product page for each individual item in one place.

The other video saw blogger, Lizzy Hadfield, open a mystery box from the M&S team which carried a pair of straight leg jeans that she had to try and style in 3 different ways. It’s a great video to make shoppable as there is so much content and product that features. So, we grouped each look so that the consumer can find the whole outfit in one click.

It’s been great to work with M&S again, and we’re really pleased with the result of this video. We’re excited to see where our work with M&S can go in the future. You can view the videos for yourself HERE.

Hot Topic: See Now, Buy Now

As 2016 Paris fashion week draws to a close this weekend, we have been discussing a hot topic of interest here at Smartzer. This is the ‘Shop Now, Buy Now’ concept that some of the world’s biggest fashion giants adopted for their runway shows this season.

Business of Fashion and Fashionista are a few of the online articles providing commentary around the subject. Last week, they began reporting on the initial responses and results to the practice of ‘See Now, Buy Now’ on the runway. Considered an “experiment” for the fashion industry, the idea behind ‘See Now, Buy Now’ enables consumers to purchase the product that was shown on the runway as soon as the show is over. This could be from the brands ecommerce site or their physical stores. It was quite a surprise both within the industry, and for fashion followers, to hear that these iconic fashion houses were doing away with the traditional six-month lead time for their fashion shows. Especially when it has been such a staple of every fashion week across the globe.

At NYFW, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren were the first of the S/S 2017 season to implement this experimentation on their highly anticipated shows. During LFW, Burberry also enabled their customers to purchase their product straight after the show.

Also considered as the ‘runway to retail’ model, everybody within the industry has seemingly had an opinion on the matter. It is an exciting prospect to see classic brands like Hilfiger and Burberry making their shows more accessible by adopting this shoppable video business model. The slow release of products 4-6 months after the show is losing its appeal for customers and creative directors. The shake up is a fresh and encouraging step towards innovation and change.

The age of waiting for product, is slowly dying out. For the most part, consumers want product as soon as they see it. So much content is consumed and given to internet users whenever and wherever they want it. There is an air of excitement around purchasing product you want as soon as you can, which is what fashion week designers are trying to cash in on.

For example, Business of Fashion reported that Tom Ford saw his biggest day of the year so far after his NYFW show. They believe this may be due the audience’s response to viewing the whole collection and feeling that the opportunity was too good to miss. Similarly, Burberry saw an instant uplift in sales on the day of their runway show. Delivering the product to the consumer straight away produces a sense of immediacy for the customer. Brands are successfully capitalising on this sensation.

Making it easier and quicker to supply products to consumers is the future of e-commerce and something we support with our interactive content marketing technology. As the fashion landscape transforms, many key brands are seen to be revolutionising the way they sell there products. Soon, all retailers big and small will be able to make their content immediately shoppable through interaction video.

There is still a long way to go before all brands are making all content clickable, but the ‘See Now, Buy Now’ movement is definitely a step in the right direction.

You can view the runway video that we made shoppable for Burberry on the My Theresa website HERE.

We are really interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic, so feel free to email us or get in touch on Twitter @smartzer.