Fashion brand adopts "will strip for attention" strategy

This could be the sleaziest use of sex in advertising that you will read about today. French fashion brand Vicomte A. hired Fred & Farid, Shanghai, to create an online campaign that allows users to undress a woman (or a man, apparently) by sharing promotions for items of clothing.

The portfolio video claims incredible success: >150,000 Facebook shares; >300,000 Twitter accounts accessed; 150% increase in Facebook "likes" and a fivefold increase in traffic to their e-commerce site:



Hey, waitaminute! Isn't something missing here? Sales figures?

Getting people to share information for a reward — whether is be voyeurism, altruism, or even just looking cool —is easy. The real problem is one of conversion.

Online fundraisers know only too well that you can emotionally trigger a user to share your cause, but you can't make them open their wallets. Using sex in advertising for attention is another part of the same problem. You can get tonnes of earned media and shares by titillating and outraging the internet with blatantly sexualized images of people, but to sell product you still have to brand and convinced based on that products actual benefits. Even a fashion brand, which depends on intangibles like cool factor, has to be able to deliver by providing great looks and a label that will impress peers.

This is French fashion. It looks pretty good. But check out the prices:

I'm going to hazard a guess that this campaign — which owed its viral success to men who had nothing better to do than to show all their friends they were willing to prostitute their social media persona for a peek at online nudity — was not well-enough targeted to people actually willing to shell out $383 USD on a goddamn pair of pants.

Sure, they'll click a call-to-action. But where are the sales?

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