Don’t jump the digital bandwagon. Create your own.
A Coty case story
Whenever the words ‘digitization’ or ‘digital transformation’ pass in conversation, a man called Dan Rice sometimes comes to mind for us. He did not predict the next digital revolution, he did not write a book on how it will change the world and did not invent a smart digital tool. No, Dan Rice was a famous American clown who ran for president of the United States in 1868. Rice used his circus bandwagon for campaign purposes and when he became more popular other politicians were eager to get a seat on it and profit from his success. And so the term ‘jump the bandwagon’ was coined.
The digital bandwagon
In our new digital age, jumping the bandwagon happens every day. Brands, companies and organizations feel the stress to come up with digital transformations and solutions. When? Yesterday. This pressure often leads them to look over the fence and form copycat acts. Of course being inspired by others is not a problem, but copying their tools often is. The simple reason being that their tool was designed to serve a purpose and solve their challenge, not yours. This is the very reason why for Sinc a digital tool is just a tool. This does not mean we don’t believe in the promise that the digital age offers. We just believe it should always serve a client’s direct challenge and not be a goal an sich.
A single sense experience product
A case that perfectly fits this view is the work we did for Coty. With its subsidiaries, this American beauty company develops, manufactures, markets and distributes cosmetics, skin care, nail care, and most prominently fragrances. Since October 2017, it landed a licensing deal with Burberry to sell their perfume ‘Her’. While preparing the training of the sales personnel, Coty stumbled upon a challenge they always face when it comes to fragrance: how do you learn about and sell a single sense experience product? To do so, we stepped inside the shoes of the revolutionary founder Francois Coty who was famous for his creative pursuits (he once ‘accidentally’ dropped a bottle of fragrance on the floor of Parisian department store, attracting hundreds of people and selling out within a day). How can we use that same kind of creativity in a 2019 kind of way?
A Burberry-infused virtual world
For this, we decided to ignore the boundaries of our own reality, and steer into a virtual one. First, in order to live up to the challenge, we needed to make a deep-dive into the brand. And when it comes to brands, it doesn’t get much more iconic than Burberry. In cooperation with our creative partners at Teyosh, we created a Burberry-infused visual world that gave people from all over the world the experience of what it’s like to walk the streets of London.
The common London trademarks such as the tube, red buses and phone boxes, were combined with the brand essentials of Burberry such as the pattern, the monogram and the logo. The Burberry tartan being formed from the drainpipes and frontage from the traditional Belgravia housing.
The pink ribbons, that are being used to wrap the perfume packaging and act as your guide through the city. The Burberry teddy bear and monogram being placed within the London landscape.
The perfume notes being described and visualized by the floral and wood ingredients springing up from the floor like meadow flowers. All guided by the soothing voice of Cara Delevingne to invoke the spirit of London: effortlessly stylish, energetic, optimistic, adventurous and bold. Expanding the sense of smell, with a sense of sight, sound and direction.
Connect on a deeper level
With this VR-tool, we aimed to blend the physical with the digital and transform the fragrance into an experience. All over the world, the VR-tool was used to familiarize the sales personnel with the brand and the fragrance. Making them connect on a deeper level with brand and product, but also giving them the tools to communicate it in the right way to their clients. For us, this is what a digital tool should be all about: taking a challenge and solving it with the right mix of technology and creativity. In other words: don’t jump the digital bandwagon. Be the clown that creates its own.
Would you like to know more about this project? Ask our strategist Jens!
