On Friday at the L2 Mobile Clinic we highlighted five innovative mobile campaigns in the luxury space. The following post is a summary of Colin Gilbert's take on the Neiman Marcus SCVNGR partnership that used innovation to drive excitement in retail.
As the economy flailed during the past couple years, eCommerce grew at breakneck speed, threatening to take away valuable dollars from brands that have relied on traditional retail for decades. To bring people back into the store, Neiman Marcus partnered with SCVNGR to create an innovative points based experience called Big Night Out.
41 Neiman Marcus locations participated in the interactive mobile challenge sending shoppers into action competing for a grand prize $2,500 shopping spree. When users opened the SCVNGR app in a Neiman Marcus store it delivered a series of questions that could only be answered in one of the retail locations. Users responded with commentary, snapshots of dresses, and bits of their own fashion expertise.
The campaign incorporated social games called "treks" that go beyond location-based check ins to let attendees pick dresses and, as Colin put it "talk about how they would have done prom differently from a fashion perspective." Dozens of publishers provided momentum for the mobile campaign with coverage and despite some geeky rhetoric, the overall feedback was positive.
This emphasis on mobile represents a major coup for Neiman Marcus. As mobile commerce and geolocal services continue to grow, it's this fusion between fashion and technology that will create excitement in store that provides momentum and drives revenue with the new everywhere consumer.
