LONDON — Before a thousand eyes, the gracious Ralph Lauren store will seem to vanish from sight. Then, in the empty space, the mansion on London’s New Bond Street is to re-emerge brick by brick, until the facade opens, to be filled by giant, striding models, four stories tall, their rose-patterned skirts then morphing into beds of flowers.
“It’s game changing — it blows my mind — it changes the way we look at architecture; it will change retail, movies, advertising, everything,” says David Lauren, son of the brand’s founder, of the spectacle and the new technology that makes it possible.
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David Lauren, who is behind many of the digital innovations at Ralph Lauren, in front of the brand’s New Bond Street store in London, which will be the canvas for an unusual tech display. |
On Wednesday, Ralph Lauren plans to offer the public a futuristic vision in which “architectural mapping” technology is used on the store facade, creating what the brand calls a “4-D” experience — and what David Lauren calls “Steven Spielberg meets James Cameron.”
The effects are to include a vision of the company’s signature polo players, a giant horse-head belt wrapping the building and a lineup of vast neckties — a reference to the product on which Ralph Lauren was founded four decades ago.
This latest dramatic development is part of what the company calls “merchan-tainment,” the concept of commerce with entertainment, which it previously has offered through lifestyle films on RLTV, its own production operation, as well as initiatives with sports.
But the new “augmented reality” project is in another league.
“We put our hearts and souls into this,” says Mr. Lauren of the sound and light show created by superimposing optical effects created by pinpointed pixels of light over a projected 3-D replica of the building.
This sensory experience — complete with sound and even a mist of fragrance — will not be staged only in London. One of the brand’s New York stores also will get a similar eye-popping show.
The company image may be of a grandee brand, more associated with the 29 vintage cars that Ralph Lauren collected with passion (the video is on RLTV) than with social networks, iPhone applications and cross-platform advertising campaigns.
Yet last month the company was ranked second, tying with Louis Vuitton, in the Digital IQ Index for luxury companies, developed by Scott Galloway, a professor at the Stern School of Business at New York University, and a team of experts. The index measures a brand’s digital footprint across four categories: effectiveness of the Web site, digital marketing, social media and mobile phone or “m-commerce.”
Mr. Galloway gave low ratings to many of the 109 brands in the study, saying that 2010 had “been a seminal year for the luxury industry. Some brands have put the weight of their organization behind digital, while others have stood still and have been left behind.”
Ralph Lauren was second only to Coach and ranked better than some obvious names like Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana and Gucci.
In his role as senior vice president of advertising, marketing and corporate communications for Polo Ralph Lauren, David Lauren is responsible for the global campaigns and the development of RalphLauren.com.
“We were the first brand to blend ‘merchan-tainment’ so seamlessly,” says the young executive. “You see a beautiful car, you read an article about the car and watch the videos. You see a dog and you can ask where you get the dog and read an article on dog breeders.”
Mr. Lauren is passionate about pushing ahead in cyberspace and is the instigator of most of the brand’s new developments. They have included an interactive collaboration with the tennis legend Boris Becker, who not only offered advice in a RLTV video, but also responded to questions from the public.
The arrival of e-commerce in Britain this month will open sales on RalphLauren.com to the world, as this British initiative is expected to be followed next spring in Italy, with Asia planned for the future.
Yet brick-and-mortar stores are still the most visible signs of the prestige and of the image of Ralph Lauren. The New Bond Street store, which will be the backdrop for the digital extravaganza, already has windows filled with red and green plaid, a sprinkling of snow on ivy and gilded horse’s heads ringed with Christmas garlands.
Other big store statements include the new men’s wear store that joined the women’s wear mansion store on Madison Avenue in New York last month. Like the Paris store on Boulevard Saint-Germain, unveiled last spring, these buildings create a tangible and lasting heritage.
But the company’s digital time line over the last decade also shows a stream of innovation.
The new millennium saw the creation of both polo.com and Ralph Lauren media, encompassing Internet, broadcast, cable and print — originally in a collaboration with NBC-TV and its cable operation CNBC. The RL magazine, with its video and print interviews with movers and shakers, as well as lifestyle, sports, art and design, came in 2001.
Mr. Lauren says that when the company first started online selling, “sales were sluggish.” But heavy investment in customer service has fueled sales that now make annual results of e-commerce “easily our largest store in America,” he adds.
By 2006, the digital experiments introduced an interactive shopping experience, using touch technology on store windows to generate sales. Then, after a trip to Japan that David Lauren said “blew his mind,” Ralph Lauren in 2008 became the first upscale U.S. retailer to introduce mobile commerce, using swipes of QR (quick response) bar codes.
The latest innovations have been the iPhone application, offering instant viewing of the runway shows; and the embrace of social networking and customer involvement.
Rugby.com, created in 2007 to drive sports-minded consumers to the brand, offered in 2009 a second application with wider social reach: “Make Your Own Rugby Shirt.” Shoppers could customize Rugby brand clothes and then share the designs by posting them on Facebook, e-mailing them to friends and offering them to the Rugby site.
There seems no doubt that the passionate enthusiasm for the digital world from David Lauren has made the difference. He himself is the interviewer in most of the RLTV video clips, from talking to the actress Julianne Moore about her Freckleface Strawberry children’s books to discussing with Kevin Costner both his personal style and his passion for ecology.
For all his commitment and enthusiasm about the new spectacular, Mr. Lauren gives the plaudits to his father, who, at 70 — and like most of his generation — has not moved into the digital universe. Yet, according to his son, he made the crucial decision 10 years ago.
“When the design team said that luxury products should not be online,” said Mr. Lauren, “it was my father who said: ‘No way. This is my future.”’
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