Frederick's Solicits Consumer-Generated Lingerie

Summary: Frederick's of Hollywood is running an online promotion for users to submit designs for a corset. The brand will use a targeted email campaign to make its target aware of the competition. Frederick's aims at building up to 100,000 brand interactions with potential customers. Is this the first sighting of Lingerie 2.0 ?

Source: AdWeek

First paragraphs:

Brands have a lot of faith in their customers these days. They turn to them to come up with everything from ads (Doritos, Chevy and others), video game concepts (Doritos), even business ideas (Dell).

Now, they've moved on to lingerie.

Beginning next month, Frederick's of Hollywood is running a six-week online promotion for users to submit designs for a corset that Frederick's will produce to be modeled on the runway during its annual "Clothes Off Our Backs" charity auction. The user-designed corset will share the stage on Oct. 24-25 with creations from celebrities like Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and Reese Witherspoon.

It is Fredericks' first major push into user-generated content, said Tracy Rhyan, director of multi-channel marketing, with the aim of reaching women in their late teens to mid-20s. Last year, Frederick's relied on store signage and more traditional online campaigns like e-mail alerts.

"It allows Frederick's to engage the consumer on a deeper level," said Rhyan. "It allows her to engage on a deeper level by becoming involved in the design."

The company hopes to build viral appeal for the "From Your Design to Hollywood & Vine" campaign by alerting the 500,000 customers on its e-mail list of the contest, which is hosted by user-generated marketing company Brickfish. It will also promote the contest on its Web site and to Brickfish's 100,000 members.

Visitors to the contest site, www.brickfish.com/fashion/corsetdesign, download a Frederick's-created corset template, then either print it out to design by hand or use their own design software. Once uploaded, they can then post a link to their design on their blog or social networking page, or e-mail it to friends.

Read the full article at AdWeek