Stella McCartney 2009 lines on your Cell Phone

Baltimore, M.D.'s Millennial Media has been hired by Stella McCartney to run the company's first mobile advertising campaign in North America, which will run from December through January 2009.

Stella McCartney is a lifestyle luxury brand - a joint venture between Stella McCartney Ltd. and Gucci Group N.V. The brand offers fragrance, eyewear, organic skin care, and lingerie, as well as a performance range with adidas, and travel products with LeSportsac.

The goal of this campaign is to build a broader awareness of, and interest in, the Stella McCartney spring and summer 2009 collections. Through the campaign, consumers will receive static images of pieces from these lines. Consumers will also be able to utilize a store locator, which will locate the nearest Stella McCartney retail location. Consumers will also be able to subscribe to future news and information updates from the Stella McCartney brand.

According to Stephane Jaspar, Stella McCartney worldwide communications director, the company wanted to add video to the ads. But research from Millennial Media showed that consumers do not have high-end viewing capabilities on their mobile handsets. They also aren't subscribed to wireless carrier plans that allow them to view the ads on their phones.

"This is an issue for many consumer brands that engaged in mobile advertising," Jaspar said. "However, many of these same consumers do have access to the mobile Web, so by focusing on that component with this campaign, we are able to reach a much broader audience of female shoppers interested in Stella McCartney products." As mobile devices become more sophisticated, and as more video capabilities are added, the company will look to incorporate rich media into future mobile marketing efforts, she added.



Millennial Media will be tracking consumers, as they go from the ads that they receive on their cell phones, to the Stella McCartney website. Stella McCartney is interested to see which pieces generate more click-through's. They are also interested in seeing which types of devices are most used, to click through to the website. (Millennial Media built specific versions for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and other basic handsets, so that they can tell which devices are used most frequently to click through, to the website.)

Millennial Media will also track how much time consumers spend on each page of the Stella McCartney website, once they've clicked through to it- the spring, or the summer line? Millennial Media is also tracking how iPhone consumers engage with the website through custom controls added to the iPhone ad version.

The goal of the campaign is to extend the brand into the consumer's lifestyle (by utilizing a device that many consumers use to interact with friends and family), and is not directed at increasing sales.

This campaign will be launched with a series of banner ads displaying various web sites on cell phones, that Millennial Media has available. Millennial Media's network of ads like this offers 3+ billion monthly impressions across 2,000+ sites.

source: Stella McCartney Launches Mobile Campaign, MediaPost, Laurie Sullivan,12/18/08