You can now find me over at Fashion’s Collective, A resource focusing on the unique opportunities and challenges faced by the fashion and luxury industries online.

Luxury goods brands have been building iPhone apps as a means to give a wider audience the ability to experience what the company has to offer. While some apps are interactive others are pure play, most of the digital luxe candy available at the moment has a short lifespan in the consumer mindset.

Luxury brands have the ability and the budget to put out really addictive digital products, however most of the apps I have come across hold my attention for about a minute until I get interrupted by an email, or a phone call leaving to never touch the app ever again. Why does this happen? Because while the initial discovery process was intriguing, the process of interactivity did not carve a need or a value for me to keep using the application.

Now some may say that these apps are not being built for lasting interactivity and that these apps are just a way to build brand awareness, if somebody opens and experiences the app once,  then for the brand that is money well spent.

But what if luxury brands spent the same kind of money to develop an app that built lasting impressions? Rather than just building intrigue, what if the app conditioned the user to keep using the app, building not only brand awareness but creating a need to actually want to own real life products.

Take for instance the Hermes Grandes Heures iPhone App, it allows users to experience the capabilities of the Hermes watch. In this case the Grandes Heures has a slow down and speed up-tempo on the watch, by shaking the phone you apparently can experience this function. Now I extend my apologies to Hermes and watch fans, but what purpose does this serve? How does this app help me? How does it accentuate my life? How am I able to share this experience with my friends who don’t happen to be sitting next to me watching me shake the app?

I think a better solution would have been to create a context around a person’s life and how they might go about experiencing the Grandes Heures in real life. Two basic things a luxury watch serves it tells time and is purely a  status symbol. The Grandes Heures app could have been built to exploit these two notions.  Can you build an app that would allow me to ‘experience time’ somehow? Can I then share this ‘experience’ with my networks (Twitter, Facebook)? And could the ‘experience’ that I am sharing allow me to create awareness and gain status with my peers? Could my peers then become so intrigued that they would want to experience this ‘experience’ too?

The answer is yes, and Hermes could be the ‘Grande’ vehicle for facilitating a ‘Grande’ time .

Ohhh how I love beautiful things… If you are into cutting edge high fashion gloss than I am sure you have heard of Another Magazine, the publication infiltrated with stunning photography and contributions by some of the worlds sought after stylists.

Another Magazine has an intriguing portion of their site where delightful things are curated into lifestyle ‘clouds’. If you click on one item that tickles your fancy, the site automatically aggregates other items that are ‘just like’ the item you like. The best part is that there are links to e-commerce sites where the items can be purchased…delicious heaven, mmm.

If you have not converged into the latest social media craze of what is known as ‘geo location’ perhaps the introduction of Marc Jacobs on Foursquare might be your personal tipping point.

For those who are not familiar with Foursquare, it is a social network utilized by downloading an application onto your smart phone. Users who roam around a city ‘check-in’ using their phone to various haunts such as bars and restaurants. This utility allows users to connect with other friends who may be in the area, earn badges for various ‘check-in’ activities and leave behind messages regarding the venue for other visitors.

Foursquare is only a year old and was developed in New York city as a fun game for people to experience social networking with real world venues. However the social network is starting to get some serious traction from big companies such as Conde Nast and Marc Jacobs.

As mentioned before in a previous post, Conde Nast is utilizing Foursquare for Lucky Magazine and their ‘Lucky Shops’ content. Users who check into Lucky Magazine’s recommended shops and boutiques have the ability to earn a Lucky Foursquare badge as well as unlock and be offered special discounts for participation. (If you are not familiar with Foursquare and want to learn more click here to watch an interview with Dennis Crowley, Foursquare’s co-founder and then I suggest you join- its a lot of fun!)

So great that a luxury goods brand is taking the plunge with such a stellar infant social network. This is what Marc Jacobs has devised:

Explore the city with recommendations from Marc Jacobs, get inspired, and unlock your own Marc Jacobs badge (careful – this could leave a Marc). Leave other foursquare users tips about your favorite items, looks, and other things to do in your city. Be a friend, join the crowd, and connect with other dedicated followers of fashion!

I am very curious to know how the Marc Jacobs team is tapping in on users who check into their stores? What they are doing with this information and what campaigns they are brewing…Watch this space!

So the buzz is tablet readers, Apple, HP etc. But one company who has been on the hush-hush is Microsoft. I just dug up a video which shows their proposed efforts in developing probably one of the sexiest concepts. In the demo it shows how designers can utilize a tablet for design research and put everything in one device for easy referral and slick presentation skills. So cool I can’t wait!

A common misconception by fashion and beauty brands trying to utilize social media is that it’s just another advertising channel. The reality is that social networks are ‘social’, they are made up of people and connections which equal relationships. However brands are still not fostering relationships but only piping messages whether in the form of Tweets, Facebook status updates, or trying to get bloggers to write-up their brand. Very few brands create a back and forth conversation.

I just relieved an email from American Apparel who were kind enough to share their latest campaign which just might become my first considered case study for a fashion brand within social media:

We’ve [ American Apparel ] just finished and shipped a collaboration with LOOKBOOK.nu to our stores in 20 countries. It’s a free 64 pg book that came out of the friendship we developed with the site over the past 18 months or so. From what we know, it’s the first instance of a fashion company ever doing anything like this on this scale.

Basically, we were intrigued with LOOKBOOK when it first came out, which led us to eventually advertise and feature their users on our site. We decided to do a bigger collaboration late last year and as part of it hosted a contest where their members submitted photos featuring their favorite American Apparel pieces. Now there are something like 7,000+ looks of people using our basics. Our 132 favorites became The LOOKBOOK.nu Lookbook by American Apparel.

What’s so crazy about this lookbook is that’s almost entirely shot by someone other than us. We brought out 3 winners who got the experience of modeling for our creative team in Los Angeles (they’re on the cover and centerfolds) but what we really tried to do was use our designers to put a spotlight on the great creative work of these users. It’s a collection of 77 creative people who each have their own way of styling and interpreting our garments. That’s what we wanted to show.

So why is this campaign great? American Apparel fully gave control to their fans to experiment with their brand, they advocated them, signaled out the best ones and gave them the right attention. This is a great example of a fashion brand that is listening and acknowledging their audience. Major kudos AP!

Here is a demo of Penguin Books latest efforts on taking traditional content from their existing publications and how they will be bringing them to life via the experience of an iPad. One of the most exciting features is how the iPad opens opportunities for viewers to interact with the content not only within the iPad but also with the world around us. Watch the demo its great!

Are you on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare? Do you have something in particular to share with a select group of people? Don’t you wish you could combine all the social networking capabilities under one roof and be able to create your own smart phone app to complement all these social platforms with your select group?

Well guess what now you can through Socialight or ShoutEm! These are two recent location based, social network micro-blogging sites that allow users to build their own smart phone apps. Socialight and ShoutEm are based on the same concept as Ning, where users create their own social networks and communities. The difference with these two new social network building platforms is that they are location based, microblogging communities for mobile phones.

Here is how it works:

• Create a social network around anything you want (lets use the example of creating a network of friends who are high heel aficionados)
• Invite friends to join from other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter etc. who are just as obsessed with high heels as you
• Import any content around high heel shoes you want onto your micro-blogging site (you can import YouTube videos , Photos and the like)
• And here is the best part, both these sites allow people to build their own smart phone applications that correspond with their own networks. So for instance if you live in New York City you and your friends can put up boutiques and stores where you can find the best high heels in town.
• Your friends can upload the application onto their phone and then use the check-in system and content export service directly from the application to Twitter and Facebook that you easily and effortlessly built yourself!
• You also have the option of creating this network as public or private.

So what does this mean for brands?  This opens a whole new magical box of being able to create experiences for customers. Small businesses and brands can build their own private networks and build free mobile applications that correspond with activities, events and products.

Cosmetics for a luxury brand are the cash cow that bring some of the biggest returns from luxury marketing. For consumers, purchasing a lipstick or an eye shadow from a luxe brand is the most accessible point to experiencing that little bit of luxury. For luxury brands such as Christian Dior, Chanel or Dolce & Gabbana extending their brand into cosmetics is worth billions of dollars each year. Therefore there is no surprise that some of the biggest marketing budgets from luxury brands have been recently  shifted on focusing how to advertise within the digital space.

I was excited to see that Christian Dior Beauty started to advocate their own ‘how-to’ videos within their website space. However my reaction to the experience was very disappointing. If Dior is going to be spending money on creating a marketing infused user experience here are some points that need to be improved on.

• Women are motivated to buy beauty products when the effects of a product have an obvious and relevent solution to solving or enhancing a beauty problem. Although the Dior how-to videos show make up application, the presenter does not go into depth why a particular product is being used. The whole experience would be much more effective if an explanation was provided what solution each product provides.
• The presentation and application techniques are too poetic, and it is very obvious that the sit-in models have already pre-existing make-up on. This is not a genuine marketing technique, women are to clever to recognize that a prepubescent model and soft lighting will create a stunning look. Dior cosmetics would be more successful if they showed techniques on how to achieve a glowing complexion. Here is a chance for Dior to talk about some of their moisturizers and toners as a means to achieve healthier skin before applying on make-up.
• Dior went to a lot of effort to create these videos however they are very stagnant. They live within the website and there is no chance for fans to be able to export and share these branding efforts. These videos are nowhere to be seen within Facebook’s Dior fan pages either.
• And the final bullet that is being shot in the foot for Dior is the fact that there is no online shopping. If a brand is going to go to all the trouble to set up an online site and create advertising campaigns within it, then please offer people to directly purchase your products from the brand site. If women see a product they get excited about online, brands should capitalize on this by accommodating a direct point of purchase, the minute a potential customer has to go chase searching after a product to another site or have to go hunt a bricks and mortar retail, a brand most likely has lost that sale.

Fashion is not the only girly interest iPhone users can dabble with. There are plenty of concepts being created for experiencing beauty for mobile, whether it be a source for make up application or beauty purchasing, looking pretty has never been made so easy!

Lookz: An iPhone application that integrates a video source stream of make-up how-to videos. The application organizes videos based on desired looks such as ‘going out’, ‘goth’ or ‘natural’.

Celebrity Makeup Looks: A source of how-to videos of how to achieve the latest celebrity make-up looks. Users of this application can rate the various looks as well as directly email looks to friends.

Beauty.com: This application is like having a beauty store in the palm of your hand. Learn, purchase, rate and share the latest beauty products straight from an iPhone.