The Brief

Gap Japan is very active on social media, especially on Facebook, their page has about 140,000 fans and becomes one of the leading fashion brands among Japanese Facebook pages. Gap is at its exploring stage of finding out how to drive SNS fans to the real retail stores, turning into customer. Gap Japan is well known as high-quality-store-service by fashionable store staffs. Also the past Facebook experiences showed that Japanese consumers are really interested in the snapshots of Gap’s store staffs’ outfitting, which is more relevant than advertising visuals. Gap aimed to leverage this power of store & staffs.

Describe how the promotion developed from concept to implementation

It is a very key to utilize something technologically edgy in a very Gap way to appeal to fashionable Facebook fans. The contents were to vote store staffs’ favorite outfits and to make a ranking of it. Gap picked up a new technology called “Real like”. When a user votes (gives high-five) by placing NFC (Near Field Communication) embedded wrist band with NFC smart phone that each store staffs carry, it is reflected as “You have voted to this coordinates” on customer’s Facebook wall immediately and it spreads even to the friends who don’t know the event.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

More than 6,000 people talked about this event on Facebook every day during this store event. This number was 500% more than the previous.　Also, an outstanding success was picked up by several major online and offline media. Featured by over 35 media, including a Japanese major marketing newspaper, marketing magazine, fashion sites, and AdAge. This also enabled to make Facebook fans experienced great store services, the Gap’s strength, through this event. About 900 people enjoyed high-fives with the store staffs and over 200 comments were posted on Social Media.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

For “digital native”, the gimmick needs to be something new and edgy in a digital way. “Real like” technology was the perfect choice for Gap, because it enables unique combination of real store (famous for friendly store staff and their sense of wearing Gap’s cloths) and digital. Not only Facebook fans can digitally participate in the vote, but also can feel as if they are deeply involved and engaged with the GAP brand, going through high-five with store staffs at the real store. Gap provided perfect “experience” that customer can play with the brand.