Turning Customers into Stylists: Social Image Sharing & Ecommerce

09/12/2012

• Urban Outfitters was originally named Free People and founded in West Philly (born and raised!)

• Rebooted in 1984 as a wholesale line• “Boho chic” apparel, shoes, & accessories targeting women 25-35• Over 75 retail locations and countless wholesalers• Recently opened our first international store and launching our first

international ecomm site this fall

Who we are…

We’re Relaunching our Denim line!

Cool! So how do we make people care?

The Opportunity:

Free People has a huge, socially engaged community of customers, fashion bloggers, and stylists talking about our product.

– 783,884 Facebook Fans

– 107,673 Twitter Followers

– 299,490 Instagram Followers

– 28,440 Pinterest Followers

– 871,446 Google+ Followers

– 1000’s of indie fashion bloggers

We know what your thinking…

And yes, there are 871,446 people on Google+

Social Sharing + Cool Product = ???

So how do we leverage this audience… to build excitement for our denim?

Enter Olapic…

• Olapic is a relatively new startup in the social image sharing space (founded in NYC in 2010)

• Captures sharing where its happening by pinging Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook APIs for specific hashtags or phrases

• Pulls images with specified hashtags into photo galleries

• The technology had yet to be utilized for an eCommerce site

The Technical Bits…

• Easy implementation via an Embeddable JavaScript Widget

• Allows for automated or manual curation

• Full CSS control over Widget

• Subdomain for gallery page

Beta Partner Status!

Olapic’s First Ecommerce Client

Now we’re cooking with gas!

Using Olapic’s social image sharing technology, we created a campaign based around the hashtag #MyFPDenim. Customers were encouraged to tweet or instagram images of themselves styling Free People denim looks using the specified hashtags…

Customers Styling Product On Detail Pages

We kicked off with a party…

Told some people in the know…

…And people liked the campaign!

• Over 600 customer image submissions

• Very nice YoY gains for denim sales

• Large spikes in backlink acquisition correlating to days of significance in the campaign

Fashion Bloggers Were Into It

The Tech Scene Dug It

Olapic Was

We liked it so much we took it on vacation…• The campaign was so

successful we decided to employ an Olapic microsite to tease our UK site launch

• With dev efforts tide up on the UK ecommerce site, this Olapic constructed site is allowing us to build brand awareness and link equity in advance of the launch

• CNAMEd www.freepeople.co.uk to Olapic’s servers, will remove upon launch of the full site

And the Brits like it too!

THE FP “IT” GIRL CONTEST

• Upload your best street style images to join the contest and be Free People’s ‘It Girl’!

• Use the hashtag #fpitgirluk on Instagram or Twitter to enter.

• Over 200 submissions so far since launch on 9/5

(Q & A)

Fin!