Would you like to send your significant other a customized video? Jean Paul Gaultier and its French Kiss interactive videos marketing approach.

While I was researching how various companies apply the latest online consume trends in retail industry of luxury goods I came across a website of one of the well-know French high fashion designers - Jean Paul Gaultier (www.jeanpaulgauliter.com).

What drew my attention was the brand’s approach towards perfumes internet sales. It turned out that the brand uses successfully a mix of online marketing practices including social media, video promotion and interactive website design. Not only the goal of these practices was to increase the conversion rate through making visitors stay longer on the brand.com site but it also attempted to make the scent of perfumes more tangible. The following actions have been undertaken by Gaultier:

• To make a fragrance more tangible Gaultier decided to label it with a type of a French kiss. Thereby, perfumes which had a stronger note where associated with rough kisses types whereas the softer ones were connected with the more gentle ones. Every fragrance had a different video with a couple kissing to ensure that the right image was shared among buyers.
• Furthermore, Gaultier made these videos more interactive so people could play with them by giving names to kissers and playing with gender. As there were only lips visible in the videos any website visitor could associate oneself with any of the kissers and name them with his/her name and with his/her significant others name. Customized videos could then be send to a friend or published via Facebook connect which gave it more chances of becoming viral. This was further supported by the fact that the brand decided to start promoting their perfumes before Valentine’s Day so then actually more people were expected to start sharing their custom made videos  or sending them to their significant others and, thereby, unintentionally promote Jean Paul Gaultier brand.
• After playing with the videos a visitor could “like” the page on Facebook which, again, was very probable to happen once people started enjoying the process of customization. To speed up this process, a “like” button was placed on the same page.
• Last but not least, it Gaultier gave its customers a possibility to customize the perfumes packaging and bottles. With a £15, a consumer could order having a personalized message crafted on the very bottle he or she attempted to give to the significant other. With other extra £15 another message could be crafted on the package itself.

So, what did Gaultier miss to address in his campaign? Well, the brand did not take into consideration the power of one-click purchases. Used widely by Amzon, this approach attempts to speed up the purchase as customers do not have to go through multiple stages of the buying process. Thereby, the probability that they will finalize the purchase, if one-click option is available, increases (3 Ways to Dramatically Increase Your Conversion Rate, February 2010). Personally, I almost bought one of these bottles because I really liked the promotion and thought that the option to customize a bottle or a packaging was a very nice idea. However, thanks to the fact that Gaultier does have a multiple stages buying process I re-considered my decision and since I like other designers better I did not buy the perfumes eventually.

I invite you all to visit this website, so you can see Gaultier’s approach. I hope you will enjoy it. http://www.jeanpaulgaultier.com/live/en#page-brand/9241db394cca7db30423d40f7aa6cc88e0e1eb8a

Have a good day,

Best regards,

Natalia

References:

http://www.onlinemarketinginsideout.com/conversion-rate-optimization/3-ways-to-dramatically-increase-your-conversion-rate/  B. Eley, £ Ways to Dramatically Increase Your Conversion Rate, February 10, 2010, accessed on 8/3/2012

http://www.jeanpaulgaultier.com/live/en#page-brand/9241db394cca7db30423d40f7aa6cc88e0e1eb8a