IMPRESSIVE LIVE SHOPPING EXAMPLES 2021

Online shopping made up 21.3% of total retail sales for 2020. Amazon counted for nearly a third of all online sales in the US. With a 44% increase over the year, 2020 saw the highest annual growth in US e-commerce in at least two decades. Perhaps an unsurprising figure considering the world was told to “stay at home”. Nevertheless, the pressure is on for brands to optimise online shopping experiences for their customers.

Offline meets online in livestream shopping experiences.

Through live shopping, brands can connect with customers to sell products in real-time. Viewers can watch a live stream and purchase the items shown in the clickable side-bar, a call to action encourages viewers to complete a purchase without leaving the stream. Using this “see now, buy now” mentality, some shows saw their sales reach $1 million in just ten minutes.

For merchants, platforms like Bambuser and Smartzer make it easy to broadcast a live shop. Through the Bambuser app, brands upload URLs of the products that they plan to showcase in the live stream then “go live” with their content to potential customers. Smartzer allows brands to build a shoppable carousel of products by importing directly from a product catalogue or manually. Merchants can then connect the platform they wish to stream on to Smartzer using the RTMP ID and a Stream Key to go live.

Live, Camera, Action

Using Amazon’s livestream gaming platform “Twitch” Burberry took their Spring/Summer 2021 show online, live from London Fashion Week.

The stream received 42,000 concurrent views and offered multiple perspectives from celebrities like Bella Hadid and Erykah Badu using “squad stream mode”. Viewers could simultaneously watch and discuss the show in real time in a communal viewing experience. Unless you are Kim Kardashian, it can be pretty hard to secure a front row seat at a Burberry fashion show. Through live stream, this can be possible for anyone and with in-person audience’s discouraged, live stream offers an immersive, digital alternative in unprecedented times.

Clarins unveils its first virtual shop to connect with customers at home.

Through several interactive online features, Clarins has reimagined beauty e-commerce by partnering with Vee24. Through a virtual and explorable online boutique, viewers can explore the store for information. The skin workshop teaches visitors everything there is to know about Clarins application techniques and a virtual try-on feature allows customers to test makeup using camera filters. Using VeeStudio and VeeSchedular, Clarins is bringing the in-store shopping experience online. Customers can book face-to-face, highly personalised live consultations with beauty coaches and view live streams with guest influencers. As a result, all the benefits of in-person shopping are replicated online.

Brown Thomas has partnered with Smartzer to deliver shoppable beauty masterclasses.

Like Burberry and Clarins, Brown Thomas has reimagined the online shopping experience for customers with department store doors closed. Using Smartzer’s platform, Brown Thomas created a fully customised shoppable video. Fully integrated into the Demandware API, the player allowed for up-to-date product information to be instantly pulled into the Smartzer editor and player. When viewing the live shop Customers could click items in the video and add them to the basket without leaving or pausing the video. Through a variety of beauty tutorials customers can click, learn and buy in a matter of seconds.

Each of these brands prove that interactive video technology can help businesses to sustain customer connections in unprecedented times.

SMARTZER 2020: A YEAR IN REVIEW

Discover Smartzer's top highlights of the year.

As we say goodbye to 2020, here are some of the top highlights that we have managed to accomplish this year. Special thanks to all of the team and our customers who have gone the extra mile and worked hard together during a particularly challenging time for all!

Smartzer New Product Features

We launched 4 new product features that extend Smartzer’s technology to reach more users and in even more media formats:

• Shoppable images - We no longer only work with videos, now you can also transform images into shoppable and interactive experiences online.

• Smartzer MINI shop links - Use Smartzer MINI shop links on your favourite social media platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok.

• Google Ads Integration - Amplify your data set by connecting the Smartzer player to your Google Ad account.

• Shoppable Livestreams - Make your Livestreams shoppable and interactive.

Best-in-class Interactive Videos

Here are our Top 5 interactive and shoppable videos of 2020. Some notable projects also include Paco Rabanne, MINI, JD Sports, Brown Thomas & Arnotts, MAN Truck & Bus, to name a few.

Events

We contributed to some great digital events involving fashion, innovation, and technology, including:

• London’s Fashion week with the British Fashion Council.

• AI Luxury and Creativity hosted by Startup Inside group.

• The Catalysts Podcast - a podcast that focuses on the key benefits of corporates and startups working together

• co:cubed SixSixty/Retail Week - Digital Collaborators

Other highlights of our year were:

• Find out how top marketers are repurposing old content to maximise ROI.

• Using Smartzer technology to transform your store into an online shoppable experience.

Once again a special thanks to everyone who has helped make 2020 a year not to completely forget and who has kept strong when faced with such adversity. Bring on 2021!

SMARTZER @ AI FOR LUXURY & CREATIVITY DIGITAL CONFERENCE

In early December 2020, Startup Inside group, a leading ecosystem of experts in Open innovation in France hosted, AI for Luxury and Creativity. Alongside Karoline Gross (Smartzer Founder & CEO), speakers included Ian Rogers (Chief Digital Officer of LVMH), Tatiana Dupond (Head of Luxury at Linkedin), Luc Julia (CTO and Senior VP of Innovation at Samsung), and Stephane Spinella (Director of Retail and CPG at Google Cloud), each discussing the role of artificial intelligence in the luxury and creative sectors today and developments in this area in the future.

Smartzer’s founder Karoline Gross had the opportunity to talk about Smartzer’s plans when it comes to using AI in our product offering and sharing more about the way we use data currently.

‘A huge part of making data useful is to turn it into something actionable’ said Karoline Gross, while talking about how Smartzer obtains large amounts of user interaction data from the interactive and shoppable videos, and how this data is processed and converted into useful and focused insights. This is split into the ability to understand key performance metrics as well as using the data to make creative decisions to adapt the user experience to the interactive overlay as well as the video content itself to drive increased interaction.

To create experiences that are personalized for each brand is highly important when working with luxury brands. A lot of the creative decisions for designing an interactive experience are supported by interaction data. As we build a larger database of interaction data combined with the user experience of the interactive videos, there is future potential to use AI to automate the process of personalising the video viewing experience for each customer based on how they interact with content online.

Bringing AI into creativity is a growing trend in the luxury sector. According to Ian Rogers, one of their main goals is to combine technology with creativity: ‘The strategy of adding operational efficiency to creativity’.

AI is playing an important role in all industries Rogers explained as he challenged Damien Gromier, CEO of Startup Inside and host of the conference, to live a day without using AI, naming some everyday tools like Google maps, which already use AI in some way in their platforms. It’s no longer a talk about the future, it’s now.

Luxury brands are all about exclusivity and privacy. These days, customers trust their favourite brands with a whole wealth of personal information, however, customers share that information with the confidence that their data is private and protected. When it comes to personalisation, it’s also vital for brands to adhere to agreed privacy policies and use their customer's information with respect. Therefore it’s important for brands to use data and AI in a customer-first mindset. With this approach, the brands themselves can become more intelligent, while also adding value to the customer throughout their consumer journey.

‘Creativity should lead the way and AI should be there to support it’ said Rogers while talking about what’s the future for AI and creative businesses, a combination of human creativity and AI to make more intelligent choices, improve the business and add value to the customer’s experience.

As we move forward we will be able to see AI involved in more and more aspects of our lives, and we are excited about the future opportunities to apply this to the work we do at Smartzer.

See the full session here: https://www.aiforluxury.paris/session/3e7dcef1-2a2f-eb11-9fb4-0003ff1d3cc2

Special thanks for Start-Up Inside for having us! Find out more about some of the amazing work they do supporting start-ups around the world here: https://www.startupinside.com/