3 posts tagged “the ydept. of communications”

The Young Designers Emporium is a South African fashion brand that gives young designers the chance to bring their goods to market in a cooperative retail environment. The retail year is split into two seasons and two sales with intermittent brand-building activities. Communication was characterised by dramatic use of window displays that engaged the market in the most direct environment.

 

The Task

South Africa was about to celebrate a decade of democracy and YDE wanted to acknowledge it.

 

The Solution

The very process by which YDE allocates rail-space to designers is analogous to the democratic process. The consumers 'vote' with their wallets and the 'elected' designers get more space to represent their ranges. That's a bit of a mouthful to put in a window, though, so we created this:

 

The Young Designers Emporium is a South African fashion brand that gives young designers the chance to bring their goods to market in a cooperative retail environment.

The retail year is split into two seasons and two sales with intermittent brand-building activities. Communication was characterised by dramatic use of window displays that engaged the market in the most direct environment.

The task:

Draw attention to the launch of the YDE Spring/Summer collection.

The idea:

Illustrate the fact that YDE is offering a new seasonal collection using the universally recognisable ‘smelly tree’ device - a symbol for freshness.

The window campaign was backed up by an actual ‘scratch and sniff’ tree insert into SL magazine, South Africa’s premium youth publication. The first reader to guess the scent won a new wardrobe from the new Spring/Summer collection.

The Young Designers Emporium (YDE) is a collection of independent South African fashion labels shooting for the youth market.

What makes it different?
Just like the name says, it's an emporium for young designers. Rather than start their own boutiques (pricey, risky) they get to rent railspace inside YDE stores and gain exposure for their work across 12 stores in A-grade malls. So it's something of an incubator for independent labels.

The year is split into two seasons, sparked by seasonal announcements and capped by seasonal sales. Brand communication leverages these events and extends into wider brand-builder themes for the remainder of each season.
By pursuing an aggressive approach to design in the windows, the stores have become destinations for their market. The strategy is to engage the consumer when they're in the mall, and in a shopping mood.

So how do you tell people that YDE is about to launch its latest Autumn/Winter Collection?

We used images that dramatised the idea that there was a chill in the air, printed them to billboard dimensions and put them in the windows of every store. Sales exceeded that of the same period for the previous year, the client was pleased and the stores were bombarded with offers to buy the posters. The campaign even claimed press.