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Crowdsourced design as as new frontier for customer engagement in fashion. A new example of the "long tail" till the last segment of single and unique products

Fashion editors and department store buyers have long had the biggest say in what parts of designer collections make it to market. This pattern is changing, however, thanks to a more social web culture and better tools to facilitate online voting, purchasing and even customization.

In an effort to drive deeper engagement between designers and those who purchase their clothes and accessories, a mix of established and lesser-known brands are now giving consumers opportunities to choose what gets produced and, in some cases, even what gets designed.

The result is both a more engaged shopper and less waste as manufacturers and retailers are better able to estimate demand before garments are produced.

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Be the Buyer

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“Fashion is morphing into a two-way dialogue,” says Vivian Weng, who launched fashion ecommerce venture FashionStake with fellow Harvard Business School alum Daniel Gulati last fall.

Although FashionStake has since evolved into a somewhat more traditional ecommerce site, the two recognized that consumers “were craving an opportunity to somehow be a part of the creative process.”

Weng and Gulati also wanted to discover new talent in the fashion industry. They created a platform where designers and shoppers could collaborate to fund the creation of new work through pre-orders. Clothes were only manufactured after enough orders were placed.

Older dot-com companies such as eBay are (Read more...)

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For inspiration and to benchmark some social media campaigns results and numbers. The evidence is that no matter the idea is nice, the initial promotion is fundamental...

The Social Media for Business Leaders Series is supported by The Awareness Social Marketing Hub, the leading social media marketing software for marketers to publish, manage, measure and engage across the social web. Request a demo here.

We’re always on the lookout for innovative social media campaigns at Mashable. This week we scoured the web and our Twitter feeds to find some of the most interesting campaigns out there.

From utilizing online video in an inventive way to creating a unique presence on Facebook, these six social media campaigns are some of the most original pieces of work as of late. Let us know about your favorite recent social media campaigns in the comments below.

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1. Intel: Targeting a Digitally Savvy Audience

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Ad agency Amsterdam Worldwide unveiled the first in a series of blogger films, called “Visual Life,” for technology brand Intel back in January 2011. The series showcases top bloggers discussing how they use technology and how it has transformed their work.

The first video of the series documented the work of fashion blogger and photographer Scott Schumann, The Sartorialist. The video garnered nearly a quarter of a million views in its first two weeks and has been viewed more than 850,000 times on YouTube and the Intel site, helping increase Intel’s YouTube (Read more...)

This post is syndicated from Max's shared items in Google Reader, by Chris Schreiber

Chris Schreiber is director of marketing at social video advertising company Sharethrough. A leading expert on social content strategy, Chris will be co-presenting a two-hour workshop on viral video in June at the Cannes Lions festival, titled “Making Videos Go Viral: Creative, Social, and Technological Techniques.”

Summer blockbuster season is upon us, and we’re already starting to see some truly innovative social video campaigns coming out of Hollywood. In many ways, movie studios are leading the charge when it comes to social video advertising, using groundbreaking interactive features, creative distribution strategies and original content to successfully drive huge amounts of viewership and sharing. Brands looking to up their social video game will benefit from closely watching Hollywood’s creative approach to online video marketing.

Here are four things that brands can learn from Hollywood when it comes to social video.

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1. Think Content, Not Ads

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Getting people to watch and share your content requires some fundamental shifts in how marketers think about video advertising. Sharing has to be the starting point when developing content. Hollywood gets it: Great content is their currency. This is one reason why movie trailers were shared 184% more than the industry average for brand video content over the last quarter, as measured by Sharethrough’s distribution network.

For example, to promote the new Muppets movie, Disney released a short original video called “Green With Envy,” a parody of the Rom-Com genre. It has more than 1.4 million views on YouTube.

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2. Mix It Up

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(Read more...)

This post is syndicated from Max's shared items in Google Reader, by Mike Butcher

Conversocial is a real-time social media management system which lets companies run marketing and customer support through Facebook Pages and Twitter. While competitors like coTweet, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, Context Optional and Socialite also let you manage Facebook fan pages, Conversocial’s emphasis on enterprise tools somewhat mark it out from the pack.

Today it announces a series A funs raise to the tune of £1.5 million ($2.4m) from European venture capital firm, DFJ Esprit. The London startup plans to grow its platform and extend internationally with this extra firepower. Nic Brisbourne, partner at DFJ Esprit, will be joining the board at Conversocial as non-executive director.

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Ryan Lawler / GigaOM:
80% of Mobile Video Views Happen on Apple Devices  —  Mobile video is still a small part of overall online viewing, but it's a part that Apple dominates, according to a new report by video monetization startup FreeWheel.  In its Q1 2011 Video Monetization Report, FreeWheel said the vast majority …

This post is syndicated from Max's shared items in Google Reader, by Francis Tan

According to a recent study from the enterprise network solutions provider iPass, workers with smartphones have a harder time being physically separated from their gadgets, even when it’s time to sleep.

Here are a couple of eye-popping stats: 39% wake up at night to check their phones and 35% check their email in bed before doing anything else. These findings show that contrary to popular belief, employees who are tied to the office put in less time on the job. The mobile workers actually work, on average, 240 hours more per year than a regular stuck-in-the-office employee according to technology blog GigaOm.

Here’s an Infographic with a lot of not-so-fun facts from the iPass Global Mobile Workforce Report:

This post is syndicated from Max's shared items in Google Reader, by Matt Brian

Amazon is to enter the flash-sale space today with the launch of a new private member fashion website MyHabit.com.

After purchasing Spanish retailer BuyVIP in October 2010 for around €70 million, Amazon has mobilised a US team and will enter the overstock items space in the US by offering items for men, women, children, footwear, accessories and jewellery with discounts of up to 60%, according to fashion website WWD.com.

The website follows the same model as websites including Vente Privee, BuyVIP or Privalia by offering discounted campaigns for between four and six days.

If you visit the MyHabit.com website currently, Amazon has uploaded a placeholder image which says the flash-sale portal will open as of 9am Pacific on Tuesday morning. The website is said to have taken a year to bring to life, established out of its headquarters in New York which employs around 40 people.

According to reports Calvin Klein, Escada and Halston are among a number of companies that are initiating discussions with Amazon to offer their clothing via the website.Image Credit

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FEB­RU­ARY 23, 2011

In addition to offering new perspectives, crowdsourcing can build engagement and find nontraditional sources for opinions

Crowd­sourc­ing is a valu­able tac­tic for cor­po­rate social respon­si­bil­i­ty (CSR) pro­grams, though only about half of com­pa­nies use it.

In Octo­ber, PR agency Weber Shand­wick and KRC Research sur­veyed more than 200 cor­po­rate exec­u­tives who have over­sight for cor­po­rate phil­an­thropy, social respon­si­bil­i­ty and com­mu­ni­ty rela­tions with­in their orga­ni­za­tions. While only 55% of these exec­u­tives report­ed that their com­pa­nies had used crowd­sourc­ing as part of CSR pro­grams, 95% of those who had report­ed that the tac­tic was at least some­what valu­able to the com­pa­ny’s CSR efforts.

Crowd­sourc­ing, or ask­ing cus­tomers for opin­ions and ideas on how to tack­le cer­tain issues, has sev­er­al valu­able aspects. When asked about the most valu­able aspect of crowd­sourc­ing, 36% of the exec­u­tives who used it said crowd­sourc­ing pro­vides new and diverse …

This post is syndicated from Max's shared items in Google Reader, by Geny Caloisi

Ford is launching an augmented reality campaign featuring the new 7 seat Grand C-MAX car on JCDecaux Innovate’s mall six-sheet screens in the UK. The campaign allows people to handle and explore miniaturised 3D ‘virtual’ models of the cars on screen and in the palm of their hand.

The campaign, created by Ogilvy & Mather in London and digital production company Grand Visual, allows users to interact with the car simply by holding their hands up to the screen.

Virtual buttons allow the user to choose the colour of the car, open doors, fold the seats flat, turn the car 360 degrees and select demos of the car’s key features such as Active Park Assist.

According to Ogilvy, this is the first outdoor augmented reality campaign to use 3D depth imaging technology in the UK. Rather than using a printed marker or symbol as a point of reference for interaction, the user interface is based on natural movement and hand gestures allowing any passerby to immediately start interacting with the screen content. A Panasonic D-Imager camera accurately measures the users real-time spatial depth output and Inition’s augmented reality software merges this real life footage with the 3D photo-real Grand C-MAX on screen.

Mark Simpson at Ford said: “Using live interactive outdoor campaigns is a great way to really engage with the audience in a way that is not possible with static posters. This has enabled us to create a targeted and tactical campaign that is relevant and fun to use.”

Andy (Read more...)

This post is syndicated from Max's shared items in Google Reader, by Martin Bryant

As 2010 draws to a close, we take a look at ten best social apps for mobile platforms this year. We’ve taken into account the design and usefulness of the apps, along with the impact they made during the year. So, in the list you’ll find a mixture of big names and lesser-known favourites that we think made up the cream of this year’s social mobile apps.

Instagram

iPhone: Photo sharing app Instagram quickly became the mobile sensation of the year. Going from zero to one million users in just two months is nothing to be sniffed at and this San Francisco startup has done it by keeping things slick and simple.

The app allows you to take pictures, apply beautiful filters and share them to your existing social networks with ease. While similar apps like Path and PicPlz emerged around the same time, Instagram’s attractive photos, simple social features for following, ‘Liking’ and commenting on other users’ uploads – and the fact that you need the app has singled it out as the app everyone’s talking about as 2010 comes to an end.

In 2011, look out for a more developed Web interface, an API and an Android app.

Foursquare

Various platforms: It may not have made its debut in 2010, but this year really has been the year this New York startup’s check-in app really made its mark. We’ve seen the number of users rocket, commercial partnerships galore, apps arrive for Nokia and Windows Phone 7 and (Read more...)