Zalora's River Island relaunch [GALLERY]

COMPANY:ZALORAEVENT:ZALORA X RIVER ISLAND COLLECTIONDATE:13 SEPTEMBER 2013LOCALE:SINGAPOREEVENT OBJECTIVE:To announce the launch of a retail partnership with British high-street brand River Island as well as promote the brand's comeback through e-commerce site, Zalora.EXECUTION:Zalora sent out a British-themed EDM, featuring models from the ZALORA x River Island collection as a teaser to existing and potential brand partners as well as media partners.Announcements of the tie up with River Island were made one month before the launch. Zalora also launched River Island in Hong Kong and Malaysia for the first time.As invitations were exclusive for this event, instead of using the usual central emailer and email address to send out the event invites, Zalora had its buyers reach out directly to its networks of brand partners, while the PR team reached out directly to their network of media partners.The guest list consisted of mainly brand representatives as well as local and regional media, local bloggers and celebrities. Zalora also invited its top spenders to the event.Zalora also released regular updates on the preview collection to Zalora subscribers as well as members of the media. The e-commerce firm also offered product loans on upcoming style spreads in selected fashion magazines prior to the event to drum up interest.Two weeks before the event, Zalora reached out to celebrities and bloggers for outfit sponsorships for the event. During these two weeks, these celebrities and bloggers would come down to the Zalora office for fitting appointments to try out the styles and sizes of outfits picked out for them by their in-house stylist. In turn, they would share their own outfit previews and talk about the event on their personal social media channels.Zalora's also ran social media updates of the event's attendees and their planned River Island outfits across social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter.The event highlight was the event's use of augmented reality walls being used, which allowed guests to shop straight at the event.Aside from launching the River Island online shop-in-shop on Zalora, the brand also offered the option of guests having their orders delivered right to the event itself.RESULTS:The event attracted around 300 guests, above its intended event size of 200 guests.Following the event, the increase in likes on Zalora's Instagram account increased by approximately 45%, with comments increasing by 33%. The brand's Instagram follower base also grew by around 15%, a much higher rate than any given month. The event hashtag, #ZALORARI also garnered 250 instagram posts hashtagging the event alone.Following the event, the River Island collection has been Zalora's best-performing brand on site, outperforming any other brands on the website.In the week following the event, River Island's on-site banners had a significantly higher click-through-rate than other banners, and also a conversion rate that was more than twice that of the site average. Shoppers also spent more time on the River Island landing page than the site average, and the brand also received a higher number of catalog page impressions per visit compared to other brands.There was also PR coverage across Insing.com, XinMSN.com, Hot FM 91.3, Urban, Nylon, Elle, Retail in Asia, Retail Week and Drapers.LESSONS LEARNED:One of the biggest challenges in organising the event was budget constraints."As a start-up, we faced budget constraints and so we had to take over several aspects of event production, in order to optimize our resources for the event," Xiaomin Chew, regional PR & marketing manager, Zalora said.The brand overcame this difficulty by sourcing for the sponsorship and partnership for the event by itself. Eventually, it collaborated with MINI as the event's official partner, Maybank as its official card, Kyo as its official after-party, and Pacific Beverages as its official beverage sponsor.Zalora also handled media outreach and guest listing for the event internally, creating and executing its launch PR strategy independently, for consistent messaging and to generate high levels of buzz around the event through news, event gallery and social media coverage.For future events, Zalora will continue to constantly adapt itself for future events, from conceptualization to planning through to execution and post-event follow-ups.More images here: