Italian fashion and design retailer Yoox is highlighting its eclectic gift assortment with a shoppable digital dinner party filled with tastemakers.

Yoox’s “Dinner Party in Venezia” content is accessible on its Web site, through its own mobile application, via its WeChat account and on a shoppable Instagram, allowing consumers multiple ways to connect with the story and make gift selections. This campaign allows Yoox to show off gift ideas for different personalities on consumers’ lists in an engaging, entertaining way.

“We are a company pioneering the field of mcommerce but steeped in old European traditions and values and committed to giving our customers the best user experience possible,” said Clement Kwan, President of Yoox Corp. North America, New York.

“Venice is a storied city rich in history and we’ve taken this traditional holiday dinner and made it fully technologically integrated,” he said. “Hopefully creating an online shopping experience that’s interactive, fun and more importantly entertaining for our customer.”

You’re invited
On Yoox’s Web site, consumers can scroll through a looped panoramic image showing the dinner guests seated at the table. Plus sign icons on the photo let consumers shop directly for tableware, and each group of attendees has an accompanying video, which can be played from an icon on the image.

Screenshot of Dinner Party landing page

Arrigo Cipriani, the majority owner and son of the founder of restaurant and club corporation Cipriani, is featured first. For the purposes of the campaign, he is the one who invited all of the guests to the party, and his video shows short snippets of all of the attendees.

Each set of guests represents different personalities and interests, and as the user scrolls, the gift guide feature below the panoramic image change accordingly. For instance, couple soccer player Carlo Cudicini and model Monica Cima portray active.

Screenshot of Dinner Party

In their video, the couple arrives at the door, which is opened for them by a butler. The film bounces back and forth between perspectives, showing the couple from the butler’s point of view, as he scans their attire, from their dressed up shirts and blazers to the athletic pants and sneakers they are wearing.

Next, the video does a flashback to show them on a jet-ski traveling through Venice’s canals.

A Dinner Party in Venezia: Active – Monica Cima & Carlo Cudicini | by yoox.com

The videos are all shoppable, with help from Wirewax, and consumers can add items to their cart in the middle of the film within the pop-out window, and then return to viewing, so their content experience is not diverted.

Screenshot of Dinner Party

Other attendees are featured in videos that follow the same format, first showing the butler’s first impression and then backtracking to show how the guests got to the party, whether stealing a gondola or taking a helicopter. Guests also include actress Alessandra Mastronardi, content marketer Ivan Olita, screenwriter Charlotte Colbert, fashion reporter Lynn Yaeger, home furnishings designer Barnaba Fornasetti, mother and daughter jewelry designers Osanna and Madina Visconti di Modrone, blogger Tina Leung, socialite sisters Vera and Viola Arrivabene.

Yoox rolled out content individually, letting consumers come back for more vignettes before compiling all of them into one feature.

Before the feature was available online, Yoox offered an exclusive preview on its app, showing clips from the making of the films.

A Dinner Party in Venezia: Backstage | by yoox.com

On WeChat, Yoox created a hub for the Christmas campaign. The same panoramic image can be scrolled through, but instead of being shoppable, pinpoints provide keywords for consumers to chat to the retailer to receive exclusive content in return.

For instance, by chatting “vintage,” consumers receive a link to a selection of vintage items hand picked by dinner guest Lynn Yaeger, which can be shopped within the app.

Screenshot of Yoox on WeChat

Yoox also linked gift ideas in a shoppable Instagram account. #InstashopYoox is accessible from a link in Yoox’s profile information on the platform.

By clicking, consumers are redirected to a dedicated page on Yoox’s Web site where they can view the retailer’s images and shop directly from those marked with a shopping bag icon.

Screenshot of Yoox shoppable Instagram

Serial content
Yoox stands out as a brand actively using WeChat to reach more than just Chinese consumers.

Also the official ecommerce partner of Kering, Yoox has teamed up with Chinese social communication application WeChat to enhance its consumers’ mobile shopping experience.

As part of the global partnership, Yoox created new official accounts for the United States and Italy on WeChat, as well as revamping its existing Chinese account. Tapping into WeChat’s platform for social shopping will allow Yoox to make the mobile commerce experience more personal for consumers, giving access to live chat and messages from the retailer (see story).

“WeChat has been a very important part of our mobile and social commerce strategy since the launch of our global partnership in July of this year,” Mr. Kwan said. “As ‘A Dinner Party in Venezia’ is an interactive and shoppable experience, it made perfect sense to us to extend that experience to WeChat, given the platform’s robust interaction and experience capabilities.

“Through a combination of WeChat’s native features and custom development by Yoox, we allow fans to explore a 360 degree panorama of the holiday dinner table,” he said. “They can touch pinpoints on the characters’ images and objects on the table to reveal keywords. When the fan chats the keywords on their WeChat keyboard, they receive specialized surprise content via an instant auto-response message, allowing them to watch videos, shop exclusive products or get inspired by expertly curated gift guides. They can even download a recipe for the iconic Harry’s Bar Bellini cocktail.

“Within our newly launched mobile app, it was equally as important to deliver a special experience given that approximately 50 percent of our traffic comes from mobile devices. Given the increased significance of this consumer touch point we wanted to make sure that we seamlessly blended mobile content and commerce to deliver the same level of entertainment to our customer.”

Serialized holiday campaigns that span platforms help to actively engage consumers.

For instance, ecommerce site Farfetch is enchanting consumers with a multi-chapter fairy tale for its holiday campaign that allows the retailer to tell stories around the luxury items available in its network of boutiques.

Each Wednesday for six weeks, Farfetch is unveiling a new chapter, based on a familiar tale and featuring some of the luxury fashion items available through its network of boutiques. This weekly installation allows Farfetch to keeping up a consistent, evolving presence throughout the holiday season, and stay top-of-mind with consumers (see story).

This campaign has helped make holiday sales for Yoox.

“On Black Friday, Yoox Group recorded the highest day of sales with one order coming every 3.5 seconds and mobile sales surging by 107 percent,” Mr. Kwan said.

Final Take
Sarah Jones, editorial assistant on Luxury Daily, New York