To raise awareness for the Mad Men Spring 2012 collection, Banana Republic surprised passengers on a flight from New York to Los Angeles with an exclusive in-flight fashion show. Banana Republic collaborated with five influential fashion bloggers to live-tweet the world’s first ever in-flight fashion show and subsequent press event in Los Angeles. Through leveraging influential fashion and lifestyle bloggers, securing an exclusive editorial on Stylecaster and implementing a robust content strategy across multiple social platforms including Twitter and Instagram, Banana Republic provided an unprecedented, real-time perspective for audiences around the world to have front-row seats at the in-flight fashion show. Attention also coordinated a press launch party at Mad Men actress Kiernan Shipka’s residence in Beverly Hills where more than 20 Los Angeles area bloggers attended for a first look. Banana Republic’s In-Flight Fashion Show, the first ever in-flight and live-tweeted runway event, was a truly groundbreaking activation for a fashion brand. Passengers, including five highly influential personal style bloggers, were expecting a routine flight from New York to Los Angeles but were surprised and delighted when the lights came on and they were granted first access to four looks from the collection. In addition to a fashion show, Banana Republic also brokered smart partnerships with Virgin America and Gilt Taste to provide Mad Men themed cocktails and meals in-flight, along with Mad Men episodes streamed live on TVs. The subsequent press event in Beverly Hills was also a major success with over 200 media guests in attendance. The campaign combined the power of social media and highly influential bloggers to create an unprecedented, disruptive real world activation. The fashion show was live-blogged, tweeted and instagrammed from various perspectives and the resulting buzz from this campaign has been the level of success against which all following campaigns have been held up against. Through influencer contributions, securing exclusive press on outlets such as Huffington Post Style, PSFK, Fashionista, and Stylecaster, the fashion show and press event was able to capture a cumulative reach of over 103 MM (MUVs) and Twitter reach of over 10 MM. The campaign garnered a cumulative placement of over 15 times that of Banana Republic’s 2011 Mad Men Fall collection debut. Additionally, Instagram photos taken received a combined total of 1,987 likes and 37 comments. As a result, Banana’s Facebook page gained over 52,000 new fans at a rate of over 1,500 per day, an over 200% increase. The company’s Twitter account received over 7,000 followers with a 70% increase in retweets.
