FreshNetworks Blog

To celebrate the launch of their new AW11 Collection, Ted Baker recently ran a new social media  campaign entitled ‘It’s Rutting Season’.

Customers were invited to visit the Ted Baker stores in Glasgow, Manchester and London on particular dates in order to have the chance to ‘strut their rutt’ in store. This involved having their photo taken in a magical woodland setting whilst wearing a nicely designed deer mask.

The photos were then uploaded to Ted Baker’s custom-made Facebook app where fans could share them with friends and vote for the “most adorable Doe and dominant Stag from each city’s herd”. The winner was rewarded with a £500 Ted Baker shopping spree.

Successful elements of “It’s Rutting Season” include:

Connecting online with the in-store experience

Ted Baker obviously  put a lot of effort into making sure the “It’s Rutting Season” campaign delivered a fun, in-store experience. The setting, masks and Instagram filters gave customers an easy way to create some highly shareable, magical-looking images.

Creating a dedicated Facebook App

‘It’s Rutting Season’ had its own dedicated tab on the Ted Baker page on Facebook. This made the campaign easy to find, as well as giving  Ted Baker a well-branded space in which to display the photos. Creating their own app also ensured that Ted Baker was operating within Facebook competition guidelines while still giving them the freedom to make the app look and feel on-brand.

Blogger outreach

Any good social media management team will tell you that in order to make a campaign successful you can’t just wait for online coverage to come to you. Ted Baker’s solution to this was to get key fashion bloggers involved by inviting them to be the official in-store photographers for the ‘Rutting Season’ event.

Ted Baker invited  Les Garcon des Glasgow, Sara Luxe and Mademoiselle Robot to participate, which increased their chance of coverage in the fashion blogs. For the London event, Ted Baker invited Mike Kus (who took over Burberry’s Instagram account for London Fashion Week) to take some behind-the-scenes snaps to share with his 124,157 followers on Instagram – a smart move.

So what could have been improved?

Whilst the app was visually attractive and easy to use, it took a long time to load. Participants were invited to claim their photos and share them with their friends in order to generate votes, ensuring a certain amount buzz. However, once in the app, when fans ‘liked’ a photo, this was not shared back into the news feed or ticker on Facebook. This seems like a lost opportunity for reaching a larger audience on Facebook.

After a cursory search on Twitter and various blogs, it would appear that despite their outreach efforts, Ted Baker didn’t achieve an extensive amount of coverage online, so their social media management and outreach programme could probably have been developed further.

Despite these points, this was a fun campaign and it’s great to see brands engaging with online influencers in order to support their social media activity.