Pop-up shop to trade in social currency
Designer Marc Jacobs is opening a Daisy fragrance pop-shop in New York’s SoHo neighborhood today but customers don’t need cash or cards to buy items. What they will need is to tweet on Twitter, post photos on Instagram or spread the news on Facebook to complete their purchases.
The Daisy Marc Jacobs Tweet Shop is being launched as part of a New York Fashion Week promotion. The shop will feature a lounge with food, drinks and free Wi-Fi. Featured will be Daisy-themed artwork created by illustrator and model Langley Fox Hemingway as well as displays of fragrances and Marc Jacobs fashion items and accessories.
Lori Singer, VP of marketing for Marc Jacobs, told Mashable that the pop-up shop was the company’s way of saying "thank you" to the brand’s fans.
"Marc Jacobs is really active on social media and Daisy is one of the fragrance brands that triggers the highest engagement among fans," Ms. Singer said. "We have seen people creating drawings and stage mood shots featuring the iconic bottle, so engagement of the fans is already there."
Discussion Questions
What do you think of Marc Jacobs’ use of “social currency” to pay for purchases at the Daisy Marc Jacobs Tweet Shop? Is this something that only has application for luxury products or would social currency work with other types of products and retailers, as well?
Not likely to work here either. It’s like writing a book endorsement for a friend when you don’t think the book is worth it. You can do it but it has bad energy that reverberates for eternity. If endorsement Tweets and Facebook postings are done just to get something free, they too are likely to ring hollow energetically. Mind you this will be a hot idea for a short while.
This is a success before the launch due to the buzz already generated. This reminds me of SampleLab that had success in Japan and Brazil a few years ago using a similar format.
Fashionistas are socialites and influencers and will bring crowds to the pop up. Even if the products are loss leads it will be made up in gaining and identify solid customers. This is the type of social media creativity required for retail brands.
What a great way to gain publicity for Marc Jacobs. This is not the first time a retailer has taken this route. A chocolate shop in San Francisco did something similar a few years ago.
To launch this type of promotion, a retailer should consider the amount and value of merchandise which could be given away versus the amount of publicity received. Then consider adding an additional promotion to turn samplers into buyers and then into loyal customers.
Whatever has value is tradable for goods and social currency has a lot of value in today’s world. The buyer and the seller are the ones that determine the value of the currency.
I’m torn on this. The marketing side of me says “fine, he’s paying people to be publicists.” The finance side of me – where I make my living – cringes. Which side will win will hinge on this staying a fad among the idle rich…anyone up for starting an “Occupy Social Media” movement?
I love this. Great example of marketing leveraging advocacy. I look forward to reading a case study on the results. In terms of working for non luxury brands…absolutely it could. What a brilliant way to launch new products, as long as they will increase social status, and this is not just by being luxury, quirky, innovation, fun, or even extremely useful (timesavers) would work. It would be a case of how much you could afford to invest in the giveaways/marketing relative to projected long term sales. Great work!
Points for novelty. Will it work? Well, I am sure there will be more than enough consumers happy to post on social media in order to get a product for free. Is it worth doing? Maybe for this first one because it will generate an outsized amount of publicity as the concept gets reported in the media. However, copycats are not likely to get the same return because the novelty will have worn off, and they will be trading their product purely for the social capital without the added publicity accorded to the first move. As such, it behooves the retailer to attempt to quantify the value of the social media mentioned, and assess how the ROI on this effort compares to that of other marketing initiatives.
I don’t believe that this concept applies only for luxury brands. Rather, I believe that the success is related to the propensity to social media of the shoppers, and the degree to which the products are ones they would be proud to share.
It’s a great buzz marketing idea – though it’s not practical to roll out on a permanent basis, I like it.
In a word, brilliant.
You can criticize the details, but have to admire someone exercising this level of creativity.
“Applause!”
As a shor-term popup, I don’t see a problem with that. Just like any event promotion where you are handing out free t-shirts as a premium, now you are trading awareness for something better than a freebie. Can’t run a business that way, but for short-term, location-specific promotions, I don’t see an issue with that. Basically, it’s the new tech version of giving away free logo t-shirts and samples.