Attendees at tonight’s Myer VAMFF (Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival) runway show will be able to shop the catwalk live from their seat, with Myer’s ‘catwalk to cart’ mobile experience.
This is the first time a fashion brand has commercialised a runway in this way.
Attendees at the show can logon to a web experience using their phones, which will present them with outfits as models approach. Using a Tinder-style interface, show goers can then swipe right or left to save items of interest in a personalised wish list.
At the end of the show, attendees can review their list and transfer products they want to buy directly to a shopping cart on myer.com.au for purchase.
Michael Scott, EGM brand and marketing at Myer said many brands have struggled to deliver direct sales outcomes from their runway shows in the past.
“Shoppable videos and live-streaming are now commonplace, but the user experience is often clunky—integrating multiple products within a fast-moving video is hard and handing off to ecommerce carts has been problematic,” he explained.
“Getting runway show audiences to buy product has been a challenge all fashion brands have been looking to solve for some time. It’s really exciting that through ‘catwalk to cart’ we’ve been able to solve this.”
As Myer’s runway at VAMFF is a 280 metre loop around Myer Melbourne womenswear department, ensuring that each of the 2,000 attendees’ phones sync perfectly with the model nearest to them presented a logistical challenge.
Chris James, ECD Digital at Clemenger BBDO Melbourne, which worked with Myer on the experience, said each item in the show has been carefully selected, photographed, assigned to a model and uploaded on to the mobile web destination.
“This allows us to augment a personalised experience to users’ phones without having to build an app,” he said. “More importantly, by simplifying the user experience we’ve removed a number of barriers to getting people through to the checkout”.
After the show, Myer will roll out the ‘catwalk to cart’ feature in the windows of its flagship Melbourne store and on oOh!media digital screens around the city. A looped video of the show will play with a call to action explaining how passers-by can interact using their phones.
Brendon Cook, CEO of oOh!media, said this will extend the impact of Myer’s one-day runway event.
“The fashion parade will be a visually stunning broadcast from oOh!’s six-storey high Bourke Street Mall digital billboard and on digital screens inside the Emporium,” he said.
“Thousands of shoppers will be impacted who are actively looking for fashion inspiration, which will help drive sales both online and in-store.”
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