Wills Lifestyle Fashion Week 2014 Clubs Fashion with Tech, Gets All Droned Out

Wills Lifestyle continues to make waves using technology at every show. Last year it was the RFID tags and this year this is the drone fitted with the GoPro Camera, bringing in an element of surprise to celebrities and bloggers alike attending the show.

Objective

The objective is to sync fashion with technology in keeping with the Wills Fashion show’s  proposition of a fashion show that is all gung-ho about technology. Bringing in a surprise element into the ‘regular’ fashion show allows the show to go viral. Looking at the proceedings from a different light using a drone brings about a novelty – thereby increasing the viral nature of the show.

Execution

In this edition of the show, fashion meets technology with the debut of the #willsfashiondrone. The drone was innovatively fitted with GoPro cameras and flew through the venue capturing the best moments of the fashion week providing a panoramic view on a live camera. The Wills drone floated over the crowd taking videos and pictures while the suspender dropped Gift Vouchers for bloggers and influencers.  The drone picked out people (best dressed, best smile, or who look like having a great time) and dropped a gift voucher for them.

The crowd was encouraged to cheer and wave out to the drone when it was around, encouraged to tweet or post on FB with #willsfashiondrone.

Activation onground also took the bollywood industry by storm. Tinsel towns very own scintillating diva Neha Dhupia and the vivacious anchor actor Gaurav Kapur were spotted engaging in a fun impromptu act at the 360 degree selfie booth and Gaurav was seen piloting the fashion drone to send flowers to Neha at the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week. Celebrities Neha Dhupia, Sania Mirza & Gaurav Kapur were seen enthusiastically posing for selfies and updating their status' by cheering for their favourite designers at the #WillsFashionTag at the 360 deg selfie booth.

All images and videos were uploaded on wills Lifestyle social platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Pinterest. Apart from the company organised a content with POPxo as well as a blogger activation program.

Wills Lifestyle also has a selfie contest running on twitter but people are required submit their selfies on Instagram - #WillsFashionSelfie. Additionally the company did a major activation with Gaurav Kapur called Wills Fashion Academy.

Positives

RIFD enabled tags that were a huge hit with the visitors last season were again a part of WIFW and continued to engage people. RFID last year allowed the visitors to create UGC to get their content viral, this year they went a step further introducing the GoPro camera-enabled drone by creating unique content – bringing in another layer of technology. Bringing in a surprise element - including the crowd from just being a passive content contributor to getting them excited in the process of being involved in creating the content – is a new angle Wills Lifestyle explored in this year’s fashion show.

Partnering with @POPxo is another great idea. Popxo is getting quite popular amongst the fashion forward in the social space.

The show this year also integrated every possible visual social platform into the campaign and used them in the best possible way. Clever use of celebrity endorsements of the show, and using the social network of the celebrities like Neha Dhupia, Gaurav Kapoor and Sania Mirza was another great move by WIFW.

Areas for improvement

A more seamless integration and more streamlined use of hashtags would be ideal.  #WillsFashionTag, #WillsFashionSelfie, #WillsFashionAcademy, #WillsFashionDrone, #MyWIFWLook would need a lot more involvement from the target audience and had potential to dilute the punch that the campaign had, were it not for the seamless execution and the innovative angle the drone brought about.

What we however see here is that the technology is getting more and more integrated with the fashion element of the show. The fear however, is that the fashion element of the show might get completely overshadowed by the technology and the gizmos used to make the show ‘content rich’.

Conclusion

Being at the helm of creativity and novelty, Wills Lifestyle has always integrated modern technology with fashion yet again this season thereby creating 360 degree brand conversations. In this edition, Wills Lifestyle took another leap with many firsts on the Indian fashion runway like introducing drones that will capture the aerial footage of the event and a 360-degree selfie booth.

WIFW has already set itself very high benchmarks. It is going to be increasingly tough to match up to their own standards in the years to come!