Vogue have launched their own TV channel. ShopVogue.tv I suspect when the history books are written - that this will be a bit like the Model T car - a model of how to produce in the new medium.
A strong link between the physical and the web world and the ability in the web world to help people create an identity.
I think that this is close to what the social web will do for the real world. My aha is that what we all want more than anything else is life is Identity. Identity is the foundation of modern marketing and will be of the social web.
The recent model for marketing was to suggest that if you bought my car you would be cool, or if you bought my clothes you would be successful. Most of what we buy today is not because we need it - it is because it tells the world something about us - our identity.
So if you take fashion - and create a interactive, dense and social world - you can deepen your sense of identity and connection therefore to the host of the site. The Social Web can deepen identity like no other medium. Because it gives us a chance to express ourselves and /or to share. The Social Web can scale at a very reasonable cost - even for Vogue. The Social Web can be tightly coupled to your physical enterprise. (NYT)
THE September issue of Vogue arrives on newsstands today, clocking in at a record 727 advertising pages. That “extra-extra large!” size, as the cover proudly proclaims, is more than 100 pages fatter than last year and seems to provide evidence of a healthy appetite for print advertising in the fashion industry.
Most of those pages were sold with the added value of an Internet feature that Vogue is introducing today: a broadband channel that aims to serve as both an entertainment destination and a shopping Web site.
The feature, ShopVogue.TV, offers links to purchase the products featured in the magazine’s print ads, while simultaneously showing videos of runway shows, fashion ad campaigns and serial shows created by Vogue. The channel will also have a user-generated component, with visitors encouraged to upload photos of their own fashion looks in an area designated Fashion U Share.
For Vogue, which is owned by the Condé Nast Publications unit of Advance Publications, the channel is a major push into the world of fashion-related video entertainment; the channel will start with more than 240 minutes of original online video content. Vogue has particularly high hopes for the multi-episode series it will feature on the channel, like “60 Seconds to Chic” (a quick-makeover show), “Behind the Lens” (a documentary-style series) and “Trend Watch,” which started on syndicated television in 2003.
At the new site, visitors will be able to shop by brand, trend, department or even price (an option that Vogue expects to become especially popular after November, when the channel will be refreshed for the holiday shopping season.) And videos from recent runway shows will also appear online, allowing visitors to see — and purchase — fashions from the current season.
Each advertiser that purchased a national ad page in the September issue qualified for inclusion on the Web site. Advertisers that bought multipage spreads were permitted to post additional content, like behind-the-scenes video from their campaign’s photo shoots. Visitors can get an inside look at the making of a glamorous fashion ad, and, if the spirit moves them, buy the product being advertised as well.
Fashion magazines may be latecomers to the online-retail sphere. This month, Hearst Magazines said it would acquire the established shopping-bookmark site Kaboodle; Hearst and Vogue’s entries both arrive years after the success of designer shopping sites like net-a-porter.com.
But Vogue is emphasizing the channel’s entertainment value over its pure advertising impact. “We really wanted to make it feel like a program, not an advertorial,” Mr. Florio said of the new shows. “We don’t want to be in a business that’s about selling goods online. We’re in a branding business.”
I am going to play with idea a lot more. For instance - why is UFIT so successful? Is UFIT really about our identity with our body rather than simply losing weight? Is identity at the heart of our relationship with food rather than diets? Is identity really the issue behind many of our chronic diseases rather than a treatment?
Is finding a Trusted Space the key to having a community that helps us find identity the key? Is Social Media therefore much more important than a nice place to hangout online?
More soon.