Google+ and Topshop team up for Fashion Week
Runway shows are famous for showcasing forward-looking styles, just as demo days are famous for showcasing forward-looking technologies, but involving the audience in actually interacting with each brand, aside from tweeting about them, has been difficult. Topshop and Google+ teamed up at the London Fashion Week to showcase Topshop’s premium line, Unique’s Autumn/Winder 2013-13, with high definition micro-cameras positioned on models to give everyone their point of view, from backstage to the runway.
The fashion show streamed on Topshop’s website, Google+, and YouTube, and various Google+ Hangouts were scheduled to allow fans, fashion bloggers, and insiders alike to chat face to face with the designers, fashion editors, and fashion bloggers, creating real time interaction worthy of the hype it received. Viewers at home and mobile viewers sitting front row at the show were equipped to interact with one another and immediately discuss each look as it hit the catwalk.
Connecting buyers to the catwalk
Further integrating Google technologies, the brand offered a Be The Buyer Google+ app wherein users could curate the collection with tips and tricks from other buyers on how to combine the looks. “We want to take the magic from the fashion show out to the world yet connect to its emotional side,” Topshop’s Chief Marketing Officer Justin Cooke told CNN.
In reference to adding buyer accessibility, Cooke told The Guardian, “Consumers will again be able to download the music, buy the nail polish the models are wearing and click on the clothes to recolour them and pre-order them. This has the potential to be digital wildfire.”
Getting visual access to backstage goings on is becoming increasingly common at fashion shows, but an entire brand collaborating with Google+ is new and could lead to other such iterations of these efforts. Offering multi-dimensional collaboration and immediate gratification for buyers will most definitely be explored by other brands and other industries as Topshop with Google+ showed how it can be done.
