Project SummarY
KAY Jewelers was in the process of developing their holiday visual guide campaigns to support customers to “pop the question” and also increase the brand’s awareness to an ever growing online consumer base. KAY’s online persona KUPID would act as the ‘wingman’ for potential shoppers to “know or recognize the signs” that it’s time to “pop the question”, however this persona was only available on the main landing pages of the KAY website.
The goal became to expose the KAY brand to a newer generation of users and increase the engagement of those users. This meant to utilize tools outside of a typical marketing campaign and dive into new opportunities that social platforms have.
THE CHALLENGE TO FIND THE RIGHT FIT
The Holiday Visual Guide campaign was only available on KAY’s website which limited exposure to users who already knew the brand and were already browsing on the site, required building multiple landing pages per campaign, to utilizing only email-driven marketing leads. The challenge was to combine KAYs Holiday Visual Guide into their already laid out traditional holiday marketing strategy while reaching users who were less engaged with traditional advertising methods (example: tv spot advertisements).
THE SOLUTION
My recommendation was straightforward, users are already on mobile devices as social and central-hub to shop their favorite brands or find products. Incorporating the Holiday Visual Guide into the social media platforms such as Instagram which had launched its in-app shop function would offer a unique way to engage customers.
SKETCHING THE INTERACTIONS & FLOW
Browsing social media has a similar feel to browsing the newspaper in the print-era. “Turning the page” has now been replaced by the “scroll” or a “tap” on a mobile device. Companies were in need of adapting to this ever-changing way users shop, browse, and engage with their favorite brands. As I sketched out the interaction and flows, I focused on bringing the KUPID questionnaire from the KAY website landing page, over to KAY’s Instagram. Each post would be a simplified version of the quiz: (1) the “question”, (2) the “translation”, (3) the “answer” being the featured piece of jewelry meant for the campaign.
SHOPPING SOCIALLY
Instagram's new shop feature offered a new experience for users to browse and purchase products from their favorite brands/products without leaving the application. The idea was to keep the flow of the campaigns social posts, website/landing pages, and the shopping experience seamless. Users are able to tap, scroll, swipe, comment, and share as form of real-time engagement raising brand awareness while also exploring the KAY product catalog. The Holiday Visual Guide campaigns would post each day offering a new quiz with a new product. Slowly, these posts would begin to form a ‘magazine-like’ catalog advertisement block right on KAY’s Instagram page. If the user wanted to view more products in further detail, within a few taps their actions would land them onto the KAY website.
A REFRESHING TAKE ON TRADITION
While building out the flow for the Holiday Visual Guide, there were discussions on how to bring the KAY website into a new age of shopping. Refreshing a brand strategy that incorporates an inviting online shopfront is just as important as a retail strategy built around brick & mortar stores. My goal was to create an attractive style tile that would include a new UI and visual language that I then conceptualized into a set of mobile and desktop wireframes.
