Nowadays, it isn’t enough for a brand to launch just any average social media campaign. For a campaign to be effective in increasing brand awareness, it must encompass an element of engagement. Last month we did a post on two social campaigns that were met with incredible success because the evolution of each campaign relied solely on audience participation and involvement. Here’s a look at another campaign by Gap that does a great job at connecting with fans and promoting engagement.
Gap, the brand synonymous with classic staples and inexpensive go-to pieces, is probably never considered to be on the cutting edge of fashion. Recently though, some pretty stylish folks in the blogosphere are revamping Gap’s classic image from T-shirts and jeans to full out fashionista with the help of a pretty clever social media campaign.
Styld.by is collaboration with fashion bloggers and The Gap. Each season bloggers such as Rue, Who What Wear, and Refinery 29, pick a few pieces from Gap’s current collection and style them based on their own sartorial preferences. The lay-out looks more like a fashion spread than an advertisement and fully utilizes social media, allowing users to pin, tweet, share, and post any of the looks they like. They use Pinterest to house all of the archives from past season and post all new looks on their Facebook page. And of course, if you want to buy the featured boyfriend shirt or a cable stripe crew sweater featured in the post, the price and link back to the product page is right there too.
The results are win-win for everyone. On the consumer side it allows shoppers to see styles on real people giving them unique ideas that are more appealing than an outfit on a plastic mannequin with no head or air-brushed to death model in a magazine. For the Gap, which in the past few years has been trying to stay relevant in lieu of the rise of trendier budget retailers such as H&M and Target, a much needed face lift. Plus the cost is probably a fraction of taking a full page ad out in the fall issue of In-Style or Vogue. And on the blogger side it allows blogs to gain a wider audience and reach.
Social media and blogs provide companies large and small with endless opportunities to get their products and services out there. So far Styld.by seems to be a big win for Gap! What’s your favorite social campaign?