Tommy Hilfiger finds Facebook generates most views for clickable videos
Mon, 12 Sep 2011 | By Gina Lovett
Tommy Hilfiger has seen Facebook generate the most views for its newly launched series of interactive videos promoting the brand’s autumn/winter denim collection.
The first in a series of three clickable videos, which link to Tommy Hilfiger’s ecommerce systems to tell viewers what’s in stock, launched just under two weeks ago and has claimed more than 3,430 views.
The videos build on existing interactive video propositions by using location and language information. Users can click or touch products in the brand’s ‘Lakeside’ video to generate live product information, in their own language, regardless of where the user has watched from. Videos are connected to live international product databases. This means that the videos can be syndicated globally, and information tags tailored to specific regions.
Almost a third (32%) of these have been on Facebook, despite also being seen on tommy.com and across fashion blogs. A second video is due for launch this week.
According to Steve Callanan, CEO of interactive video tech firm Wirewax, which built the interactivity and data feeds, the videos haven’t been syndicated on YouTube because the platform doesn’t allow embedding of third-party players and “strips out” any interactivity.
“It doesn’t want to encourage people to click away from YouTube, whereas Facebook is really embracing it,” said Callanan. ’Facebook’s going to use [Tommy Hilfiger] as a case study to provide figures on this idea of rotational traffic – that you might click away but if you watch it and like it, it will go on to another news feed. It’s this viral rotation of content.
“One of the issues that comes with clickable video is who’s going to maintain it and keep information up to date? What this does is plug into the Tommy Hilfiger ecommerce system, keeping track of live stock information or price fluctuations,” he said.
Tommy Hilfiger approached Wirewax to work on an interactive video series following the tech firm’s work for men’s fashion brand Oki-ni. The east London and online high-end retailer put clickable video, produced by RSA Films and directed by Antony Crook, across 350 fashion blogs, which claimed a 58% click-through rate. The conversion rate of 1% resulted in $20,000 (£12,600) sales in two weeks.
“In the cases of both Oki-Ni and Tommy, we’re seeing almost flat retention charts, which shows that people are engaged for much much longer than a passive video and stay engaged right up to the end of the film,” said Callanan.
