Sunday, March 6, 2011

Zara launches new social network: Zara People!

The Spanish clothing empire, Zara, ranked #48 in Interbrand’s Best Global Brands 2010, is attempting to tap into the social shopping phenomenon with Zara People!.  

Zara People! is Zara's take on an already extremely popular online activity called a ‘lookbook’ or ‘street style’ combined with Social Shopping. This phenomenon has already exploded in the tween and teen online demographic.

Recently, eMarketer published a study on teen girls and social shopping  in which they point out:

Teen girls have a passion for continuously experimenting with new looks as a form of trying on different identities. They are greatly influenced by peers, pop culture and celebrity. Given their sheer number, potential spending power, internet and social media usage, teen girls represent an enormous opportunity. Retailers that tap this vein will attract new customers turned on by the viral buzz that girls themselves create.

Zara People! invites you to create and account and upload photos of yourself wearing at least two articles of clothing from the current collection (with each article referenced). 

Each week, Zara will select 10 photos of the best ‘looks’ and post them to Zara People!, as well as using them for commercial promotional purposes. 

Those 10 people who own the chosen looks will receive a prize of €300 (in exchange for giving up rights to the look and the image). That's €3,000 per week to reach potentially millions of custmores worldwide. For a company with the size and success of Zara, I don't think they'll be feeling a pinch in the budget.

Suite101.net points out that this is an interesting endeavor for Zara to take as normally Grupo Inditex, its parent company, prefers to be conservative with advertising and lets the stores and clothes advertise themselves. 

According to Modae.es, the Zara brand is one of the top 20 most liked on Facebook. As of publishing this article, Zara has 8.1 million fans. Curiously, however, with such a huge fan base, Zara has not yet announced Zara People! on Facebook nor created a fan page for it. 

The launch of Zara People! in Spain has not been widely publicized, and finding information in English is nearly impossible at the moment. 

Perhaps the goal is for Zara People to virally publicize itself?

The sign-up website is logically located at https://people.zara.com/, but the location of the site itself is more hidden and not directly connected to the account page: http://www.zara.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/category/es/es/zara-S2011/69502/PEOPLE%2B

The first ‘looks’ came out this week: http://www.demujer.es/zara-people/

My predictions is that this will be a huge success. I’m interested to see how it evolves…


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