Selfridges: New online shopping and brand identity

Surely, you could buy online. Surely. But no. It seemed the 21st century had slipped Selfridges by... if you wanted their stuff (and there's a lot of it...) you had to get down to Oxford St or the Bullring (or the one in Manchester, but I've never been there) and buy it in person. Or get a minion to do it I suppose.


I think originally, Selfridges didn't want to get into e-shopping because they though it would take away from their in-store experience. After all, they're pretty good at putting on experiential shopping and buying something online, they thought, would dull that experience. Also, there was a thought that luxury shoppers wouldn't want to buy online - if you're going to spend a couple of K on a handbag, you want to do it in person, you want to see it, feel it. Not so. While I was on placement at Open, we undertook some trend and consumer research for Selfridges, particularly into the habits of high-end luxury buyers, and actually, quite a lot of people do want to buy luxury goods online. Maybe they're not the type to splash the cash and show off, maybe they're just too damn busy to navigate selfridges on a busy saturday. In any case, there was a need. And it seems Selfridges listened.

The homepage is nice and clean, with good interactivity and not too much flash-usage.  All those boxes you can fling around with your mouse. I've spent a good while stacking them up neatly. Slightly calming, yet alarming.

The Selfridges blog is just starting up too, called Selfridges Says... (slightly familiar don't you think! I know I'm great, but no need to rip me off ;) haha.)

What I really like though is the identity of the branding. It comes across best in the emails they send out:

It's just really fun and quirky, I like the hand drawn illustrations and the fact that the product shots aren't just cut outs of flats, they are displayed like an exhibition, curated almost. That's a word we threw at Selfridges. Actually that's a word that's being thrown around a lot recently. It's a good 'un.

The Wish Rooms

This is brilliant. It's like Wish Lists 2.0. As you browse the site, you add things to the Wish rooms. Then you can hop on over and create outfits from what you've added, arranging them on the mannequins. You can then send to a friend (ah, sharing, way to go) or just rush and buy them cos you're so rich and NEED that Stella Mccartney jumpsuit. Sharing them is good as your friends get to see them on a mannequin, as an outfit, and can give you advice! I also think it would be good for fashion bloggers who don't like awkward outfit posts (like me...) - you can just stick the stuff on the perfectly formed mannequin and all is good.

I also love the Inspiration trend boards:

I do a lot of trend boards at work and these are so inspiration and amazing. Defo something to aspire to!


Nice one, Selfridges. You made us wait a long time... But I think it's worth it.

Ads I love: Wrigleys Extra 'Banish Smelly Followers'

Now. This isn't a clever viral marketing campaign, or guerilla gardening, or anything of that jazz. This is a plain, straight-up TV advert. And generally, most of them are bad. Not this one. It made me laugh and go 'aw' and feel fuzzy all at the same time. Possibly just a girly reaction, but my dad also immensely liked it too. And he complains about adverts more than I do.

Banish Smelly Follow..
Watch the ad...

Watch it. Why do I love it? Cute characters. Nothing gets me more than cute, slightly helpless characters. It's why I also love the Orange adverts.

And that it also works, at telling you what the product is (or reminding you of it) with none of that cliched icicles/arctic wind/cool fresh breath/breathing on a mirror stuff that most adverts of similar brands come up with it. It's just a visual representation of bad breath. In a cute way.

What's the song in it? If anyone knows, say so. It's nice.

I also love the bit at the end where the lil ickle onion gets stuck in the lift door. I hope he doesn't get squashted >.<

Alright, enough. I've made my point. It's fun and happy. The way ads should be!

Co-Creation Hub: Logo and Branding Co-Creation Day

Back on the 15th January of this year, I took part in a Co-Creation day at the Co-Creation Hub, London. We couldn't post about the day until after the Co-Creation Hub had gone live - now it has and I've got some time to post about it.

A group of abut 15(ish?) of us got together, via Headbox, and spent a day thinking about what the Hub stood for, it's values (we picked them apart pretty good and proper, it had lots of marketing speak which gets on my nerves a bit and other people all felt the same too - values in plain english please), it's brand, it's name, and it's logo. Everything really, it was an intense day but really fun.

We were shown logos that had been sent in by Jo Public as part of a crowdsourcing competition - as their blog says, some were good, some were... not.

But some bits were quite good so we took a bit of inspiration here and there, and also sat down with our amazing marketing minds and come up with some more, in groups. There were 3 groups I think:
To kick us off, each group was given a few different words to inform the logo and drive us forward - words like Diversity, Communication, etc etc. Top left 1 and 2 were mine :) Hurrah. I think that was based on conversation/exchange, I can't quite remember - I just drew a circular object with a back-and-forth line to represent a back and forth conversation and we all kind of went 'yeah... quite like that!' As so happened with lots of other ideas that came out of our group. We had some good thoughts I think. The fish came out of our group too. Oh Em Gee that fish caused some controversy. Let me state right here that I wasn't keen on it from the outset - but as should be done in group brainstorms, no-ones ideas should be shunted. I'm sure some of my ideas weren't liked by everyone either. Anyway everyone else in the group loved it so I'm not one to dampen people's ideas... I just way wasn't keen on the cartoon fish. I liked the thinking behind it though, it was all about Evolution, you know evolution of ideas through co-creation etc, and a sea-creature coming onto land and evolving.. etc. It's just I hate cartoon-y logos, especially ones with animals. And I think the meaning would be so lost. Normal people would be all 'What's co-creation, and what's a fish got to do with it?' But I think this point was lost on people.

Anyway it got to presentation time and it was definitely a Marmite moment - some people liked it some really hated it. Being part of the group that presented it made me feel like I had to like it but I really didn't. Maybe this is a lesson in telling people if you think the idea is bad. And just sucking it up. But I kind of believe co-creation is all about letting everyone put their ideas on the table without scorn or ridicule or whatever. Hmmm.

Our group also took the typographic approach and started from one of the competition logos, where they had made the word 'HUB' and joined the letters together - we liked that, but simplified it without the speech bubble etc. This was my favourite I think, and I'm glad they took the initial idea and used that as the final chosen logo after we were done:


I think they also took ideas from other groups where they made another version of the logo using loads of different coloured handprints:

Which I really like. It upholds the spirit of Co-creation too :) Here is the blog post they wrote about the whole process.

I really enjoyed the whole day, I love brainstorming and collaborative thinking, especially when it comes to branding and marketing projects. I miss it actually, did it a lot at my placement at Open and don't get to do it so much anymore. Hopefully in the future.

The Hub are now implementing an initiative called Co-Create London where they ask a very simple question: ‘What Would You Do To Make London a Better Place?’ By gathering ideas, solutions and fresh thinking about the city the site hopes to address issues that are important to people of London and give citizens the platform to make positive changes. It's a nice idea and it's gaining momentum - follow them on twitter for up to date examples of what people are saying.

A bit about the background of the Co-Creation Hub London:

"The Co-creation Hub is a collective of organisations, academics and individuals who believe in doing things ‘with’ people rather than ‘at’ people.

We currently work in the branding and communications industry, but we think our approach can be applied to any number of industries and organisations in order to solve almost any problem.

We believe great ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. And that means there is a huge untapped resource of creativity out there that co-creation can allow to flourish."

You can get involved with the Hub here.