- Feb 12, 2021
2020 was the year for cancelled plans. The Summer Olympics was cancelled for the first time since World War II, Glastonbury 20/21 was cancelled, Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, The Rolling Stones and The Weeknd were all forced to reschedule their highly anticipated tours and ITV’s Love Island was unable to take place. The list goes on.
With the word of the year being “unprecedented”, the only thing we could be 100% sure of was that the events industry needed to adapt to accommodate for restrictions.
While some brands have refunded and rescheduled events, some have made the virtual transition to livestream. In fact, the occurrence of virtual events went up 1000% since the start of COVID-19 with 52,000 on just one platform, 6Connex.
Brands driving virtual events in 2021
Livestream Music
Online livestream venue StageIt has been helping to connect fans with lesser known artists for years. Here, acts stream live from the comfort of their homes via laptop cameras. Through an interactive chat room feature, fans can communicate with artists by asking questions and requesting songs. With venues closed, StageIt enables fans to financially support artists through a monetized system and acts can show their appreciation for viewers via a virtual tip jar. Through interactive video streams, fans can win prizes such as band merch or one-on-one Zoom sessions.
Bigger artists such as The Weeknd have held live, interactive virtual concerts. In August 2020 he took to TikTok drawing over 2 million total viewers and raising over $350,000 for the Equal Justice Initiative. Adam Lambert will host a series of live streams this February 2021 discussing Stonewall day and up and coming LGBTQ artists. Eddie Vedder, Phoebe Bridgers and more are set to perform virtually for the 34th annual Tibet House US Benefit concert with tickets starting at $25.
Livestream Fashion
Harnessing the magic of the internet, Dior streamed their Autumn 2021 Men's show live online as a part of Paris Men’s Fashion Week on 22 January 2021. The innovative, vibrant collection inspired by surrealism and science fiction reflected the limitless possibilities of combining technology with fashion. Featuring art from Kenny Scharf the show was streamed live using Amazon owned platform Twitch. The technology has also been used by Burberry in their Spring/Summer 2021 show. By contrast to Snapchat, Facebook Live, or Instagram, Twitch’s streaming service is more public, bringing the front row seat at fashion week to your device screen. The interactive video experience gave viewers the opportunity to connect with each other in live chat rooms. As a result, live streaming could bring the fashion community together during a socially distanced period.
Live Shopping
With store doors closed, interactive video is opening up new opportunities for ecommerce. Department store Brown Thomas partnered with Smartzer to create interactive and shoppable video events featuring brands like Laura Mercier and Bare Minerals. Customers could book onto breakthrough beauty masterclasses and tutorials to learn about makeup products and application techniques. They could shop the content shown in the stream via a product carousel and add items to their basket without leaving the stream. Through these exclusive events, customers were provided with a bespoke, live shopping experience that generated a community feel for like minded makeup enthusiasts.
By using Smartzer’s player that was fully integrated into the Demandware API, up-to-date product information could be instantly pulled into the Smartzer editor and player to be showcased to viewers. The private videos are now available on Brown Thomas’s ecommerce site for anyone to view. By using these videos for video content marketing, brands can engage and inform standard web visitors and turn general traffic into qualified traffic. Tests have revealed that a consumer who watched a video demonstrating a product was 144% more likely to add that product to their shopping cart. Through interactive, demonstrative video content brands can increase online engagement and build trust with their audiences to increase conversion rates.
- Feb 11, 2021
Updated: Sep 7, 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.
Updated: Feb 12, 2021
How brands like Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Zimmermann drive online conversion through video content by turning it into an interactive and shoppable client experience.
Photo courtesy of Valentino
Today in 2021, we look over the past year as the year that disrupted Luxury more than ever before, forcing brands to accelerate on digital and omnichannel strategy, ensuring that products were available anywhere and anytime, in the channels where their customers preferred to seek them.
Maintaining the appropriate brand image and experience across platforms, while tapping into the different sales channels to engage clients and drive conversion continue to be at the forefront of challenges for brands this year.
The rise of video campaigns in luxury has been an increasingly popular tool for brands to communicate key messages, as well as showcase product launches and collections following their own creative direction, has allowed them to connect with their audiences in a more immersive way. Video is seen as the key driver for e-commerce for luxury brands in 2021.
Since almost all major players are using video in their digital marketing strategies, it’s important that content is unique and stands out, but with 2020 boutique closures and global pandemic measures, customers are having to rely on the content they see online to influence their buying decisions.
Creative teams are therefore having to change the way they work on content, ensuring that they convey the correct brand image in a way that would also appeal to an online consumer audience.
Luxury brands are using a range of video experiences fro shoppable videos of Valentino, to personalised video shopping by Gucci, and
Brands like Valentino, Ralph Lauren and Zimmermann are allowing their audiences to purchase products directly from video campaigns by sharing shoppable videos where an interactive overlay has been added to existing content. Through this immersive video experience, viewers can directly click on the brand’s video to instantly explore the detail of the product, as well as adding products straight to their online shopping cart.
Sharing this live shopping video experience on their website, as well as across channels such as Instagram and Facebook, has enabled the brand to drive qualified traffic to desired product pages on their website, to increase on-site engagement and to drive additional sales online.
Shoppable video is proving to be the perfect marriage of brand experience and the virtual boutique and as 2021 is already set to be a difficult year for brick and mortar businesses, video content and online user experiences will continue to be key elements of this year’s luxury market’s strategy.