Ted Baker takes ‘massive step up’ in content ambition as it adopts cinematic approach for shoppable film campaign
Ted Baker is embarking on its largest marketing campaign to date as it rolls out an intricate, espionage-themed campaign that utilises shoppable film technology and Google’s voice search functionality to realise its content ambitions.
The global ‘Mission Impeccable’ campaign is underpinned by a cinematic short film that is entirely shoppable, and is based on a fake villain, named The Needle, who has stolen classified fashion information from espionage body ‘T.E.D’.
The campaign, which is running in 50 countries, kicked off in July with a tongue-in-cheek ‘take over’ by ‘The Needle’ on Ted Baker’s social media channels, that encouraged consumers to take part in puzzles and competitions to win prizes. The full Autumn/Winter push officially rolls out today (7 September) with a shoppable film, in an exclusive collaboration with Selfridges.com in the UK and Nordstrom.com in the Americas.
The campaign comes as Ted Baker looks to improve the quality of its content creation as its global footprint grows – the campaign film was executive produced by director Guy Ritchie – and to reflect “where we feel we are as a brand”.
“We took the view that we’ve learnt a lot in the past, certainly from the last two seasons, and the work that we have done with moving image to that point,” Craig Smith, global brand communication director at Ted Baker told The Drum. “What we have agreed, is very clearly, that mobile, moving image and content are fundamental to a brand nowadays and we’ve said is, ‘OK we are going to really invest properly in level of content production, breadth, scope and where that lives’. This is the first example of where we feel we are at as a brand.”
Ted Baker has also worked with Google to create what it claims is a ‘world-first’ fashion application of Google App’s voice search, to enhance the retail experience. To use the functionality, consumers need to use Google’s voice search to say out loud different spy-themed code words that can be found displayed in Ted Baker’s high street store windows. Once searched for, a display ad will appear in Google and when clicked reveals if the consumer has won a prize that can be claimed in the particular store they are visiting.
The campaign comes at a period of exponential growth for the retailer, which saw sales increase 26.5 per cent to £321.9m in its full year results in January, this despite shunning traditional advertising methods, instead favouring social led marketing campaigns.
Reaction to the social activity for the Mission Impeccable campaign so far has been going “incredibly well” with thousands of people interacting with the ‘takeover’.
“The reason why these worlds work so well is because people can play along, they are not responding to a line they are really in the world,” Nik Roope, executive creative director at Poke (the agency behind the work), told The Drum.
“From an imagery point of view we have really gone to town to make this beguiling, highly stylised and slightly retro espionage. It doesn’t feel like a below the line, half-baked quiz mechanic it really feels like the beating heart of the whole thing”.
“Tonally this is much darker, but in essence the conceptual approach is the same, Ted Baker has taken a massive step up in ambition, and there is a darker subject matter is leading the way.”
The three-minute campaign film, directed by Crowns & Owls, will be released at 2:30pm on the Ted Baker website, Selfridges.com, Nordstrom.com and on YouTube.