To help fashion magazine Flair build brand affinity and reach a new, younger audience, Duval Guillaume Modem honed in on the insight that women look to each other for fashion inspiration. The agency developed the Flair Fashion Tag —a Facebook app that allows people to easily tag pieces of clothing in photos and share them with friends. All “fashion tags” are displayed on the Flair Facebook page. The best are also featured in the magazine, creating a constant interaction between Flair’s online and offline presence and building awareness of both. The campaign was one of the first published to the Facebook Studio Spotlight, and took home a Media Lion at Cannes earlier this year. We caught up with Mattijs Devroedt, strategic planner at Duval Guillaume Modem, to learn how his team created a strategy that is social by design by starting with an intuitive consumer insight.

What was the big idea behind the Fashion Tag campaign?

With the Fashion Tag campaign, we translated a real-life habit into a virtual habit. We started from the insight that when women are looking for fashion inspiration, they often look to their friends to see what they are wearing, what's hip, and where to shop. We then created an application that uses the familiar tagging mechanism from Facebook, only to allow users to tag clothes instead of people, and then to share the “fashion-tagged” items with their friends. All fashion tags are displayed in a gallery on Facebook, and the most interesting items are also featured in Flair magazine. So in addition to an engaging Facebook experience, the application also creates a cross-media flow of relevant content that incorporates what the Flair audience likes on Facebook into the magazine.

The key insight that that women look to each other for fashion inspiration—did that come from consumer research, or was it more intuitive?

It was an intuitive insight, but it is also something that we picked up from observing behavior on Facebook. I noticed several of my friends using Facebook to compliment their friends’ fashion choices by posting comments on their pictures. When we looked more broadly, the team noticed that commenting on fashion and specific items was also happening on the Flair Facebook page and in other places. So there was no research done in a formal sense, but we knew we were creating a relevant tool for Flair readers because we were translating something they already do in the real world to the virtual world.

Once you had the Fashion Tag idea, how did you execute it?

We partnered with The Parking Lot and S2Media to help us build the application. Our planners and creatives were very involved throughout the production process. We knew that if we really wanted to engage Flair readers, we needed to create something that was elegantly designed, easy to use and relevant. One of the great things about working on Facebook is that it is already part of people’s lives—part of that is because in addition to being interesting and engaging, using Facebook doesn’t require a significant effort. To create a constant flow of interaction with the Fashion Tag app, we knew we had to create a product someone would immediately want to use again. The close collaboration with the production agencies was key to making that happen.

What was reception like when you launched the Fashion Tag app? What results have you seen?

We were very pleased to see thousands of fashion tags created within the first weeks after launching the app. We wanted to make sure we created an experience that would deliver Flair’s goals of empowering and inspiring women, increasing engagement with the Flair Facebook page and increasing the size of the Flair fan community; we have done very well on all three accounts. The concept is one that gains traction over time as the magazine raises awareness of the Fashion Tag app and vice versa. Engagement has continued to grow as more people see themselves and their friends being tagged on the Facebook page and featured in the magazine.

What do you think contributed most to Fashion Tag’s success?

One of the biggest factors in Fashion Tag’s success is that sharing is inherent to the concept. It's not an experience you have once and then it’s over—sharing with friends is embedded in the idea, and we made sure that the app was easy for people to share when they wanted to. I think it's important for marketers to see the opportunity that Facebook offers brands to play a more meaningful role in the lives of consumers—and to do that all year long. We are always thinking of ways to depart from the campaign philosophy, which I think leads to better social ideas. One of the big advantages of Facebook is that you can be there when the consumer wants to interact with you, and that you can have a sustained, meaningful impact on their lives. Having that kind of impact requires a 365-day approach, instead of thinking in terms of finite campaigns.

Mattijs Devroedt is a strategic planner at Duval Guillaume Modem. Make sure to check out the Fashion Tag campaign in the Facebook Studio Spotlight.