Retailers and clothing designers are collaborating to offer electronically enabled clothes hangers that tally Facebook 'likes' so you can see what the other 600 million friends think. While some people have a highly developed sense of style, many of the rest of us are less certain about our choices (just look around you...).
This innovation marries that very human insecurity about how we look with our deep-seated love for instant communication with the social network. There will, of course, be occasional glitches - like who makes sure the clothes were put back on the correct hanger after trying them on (this may not work during holiday shopping seasons) - but the trend is to carry our friends with us and to consult whoever is plugged in whenever we can.
The larger issue is that in what often feels like an increasingly distant world we prefer feeling connected. Merchants who address that conviction are tapping into a strong set of needs. JL
Sam Laird reports in Mashable:
Do you love to shop for clothes, but worry what people will think of your sartorial choices? Now some real time fashion feedback has arrived in Brazil via Facebook.
Retailer C&A has started a marketing push there that marries online groupthink with real-world decision making. Called FashionLike, it works like this: Whenever sometime Likes a clothing item online at C&A Brasil‘s site, that thumbs-up is tallied on a screen embedded in clothes hangers on the store’s physical racks.
Shoppers can then consider that input as they browse the store aisles. Do you take the popular shirt with more than 1,000 likes, or go under-the-radar and pick the one with just a couple hundred?
C&A is not the first to marry digital and real life in the world of fashion marketing. A Stussy campaign last month promised that a model dressed for winter warmth would shed clothing layers according to how many likes the campaign generated on Facebook.
Others have sought to crowd-source design feedback from the masses online. And Maybelline recently hired the star of the popular “Sh*t Fashion Girls Say” parody video for a stint as the brand’s new spokesmodel.
As many have pointed out, however, there is one major potential stumbling block with C&A’s FashionLike: What if someone just walked into the store and switched items between hangers?
But stumbling blocks or not, C&A’s effort is an interesting intertwining of Facebook and the real world — a trend that will likely become more and more common.
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