LFW15: Topshop, UGG, Burberry and Ted Baker embrace digital innovation

The global digital takeover isn’t just happening in shops, in our homes and in the workplace. It’s also happening on the fashion runway, with more and more labels embracing innovative methods of reaching their consumers and offering them exciting, fresh, relevant real-time content via mobile and online.

At this year’s first London Fashion Week, several forward-thinking British labels decided to step up the marketing campaigns for their Autumn/Winter 2015 collections, employing new and exciting hi-tech methods of communicating with fans via technology including Twitter, Blippar, beacons and even a homemade Google Cardboard virtual reality headset. Let’s take a closer look…

Topshop

Fashion giant Topshop deftly used digital to let consumers shop for trends from their runway shows based on real-time tweets. Partnering with Twitter, social marketing platform Stackla and bespoke media company Ocean Outdoor, Topshop let passersby of big screens in London, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow know which looks at their Tate Britain show were trending on Twitter. People who then tweeted Topshop with the relevant fashion trend hashtags (#pleats, #utility etc) were sent a curated instant-buy shopping list by the store.

Speaking to Brand Republic, Ocean CEO Tim Bleakley said: ‘This campaign is striking for its immediacy and relevance to it target audience. Here’s proof that premium digital out of home really is the media of the moment to get your brand noticed.’

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Burberry

Burberry led the fashion pack in terms of digital innovation at London Fashion Week 2015, offering fans real-time photographic updates from the runway via Twitter and teaming up with Line - a hugely popular Japanese social app that uses emoji-style character stickers - to live-stream their show to the app’s 180 million dedicated users in Asia. Line even created special cartoon stickers of Fashion Week stalwarts and Burberry ambassadors Cara Delevingne, Christopher Bailey, Mario Testino and Anna Wintour (plus a short film starring them) for the partnership.

UGG

Australian shoe brand UGG collaborated with Stylist magazine and Blippar’s visual browsing app to offer shoppers a unique and engaging augmented reality mobile experience during London Fashion Week, and better showcase their new collection. UGG fans simply downloaded the free Blippar app to their mobile phone or tablet and blipped leaflets beside shoe displays in shops and stickers on the soles of UGG shoes to unlock the Stylist editor’s choice edit of the collection and the ability to shop for footwear instantly.

River Island

River Island let fans experience futuristic fashion in 3D by partnering with Google and producing a 360º video for iPhone and Android. All fashion bunnies need to do is slot their phone into a Google Cardboard headset - handed out by River Island in-store with all purchases of their new line - and watch the film in-store or at their Somerset House show. The YouTube trailer can be viewed here.

Ben Lewis, CEO of River Island, told Marketing Magazine: ‘We are excited to be the first fashion brand to pioneer the use of Google’s new virtual reality technology within the fashion arena. Since the start of Fashion Film, we’ve sought to explore and build on the relationship between fashion and film and now with Google Cardboard via handheld mobile, we are able to reach new technological heights for the viewer.’

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Ted Baker

Ted Baker introduced beacon technology into its Westfield White City store in London, letting customers communicate with their in-store mannequins via smartphones and a free app about their clothing lines. Ted Baker’s customer relationship manager Scott Taylor told Retail Week: ‘Shoppers want to be able to access the latest technology and use their smartphones while in store. From today, we’re launching this new technology in Westfield’s White City store, with further roll-out planned in the near future.’