GAP Gets Interactive

This week GAP aimed to top some of its best advertising with the launch of its holiday season campaign, "Mix it Up."  GAP is taking advantage of a new strategy (dare I say, attempting to mix it up?) - interactive and viral - to boost its sales this holiday season.  This is a different approach from past campaigns that featured only print and broadcast advertising.  GAP is promoting the mixing of clothing patterns by remixing familiar holiday tunes featuring some of today's top music artists, actors, and actresses.

Entertaining, as always, but this year GAP takes it a step further.  Consumers can go online and view the series of commercials, email their favorites to their friends, and create their own remix featuring the same celebs.  Creators choose the singers and dancers for different segments of the "Jingle Bells" remix and then choose a message to be featured at the beginning of their video.  Each emailed video contains a "special offer," where consumers can register their email address to receive 15% their next GAP purchase and receive further special offers.

GAP is truly using interactive to their advantage.  The self-made remix only takes seconds to create, but has an addictive quality that has the potential to keep the consumer on the GAP website creating and sending out their own GAP promotions.  In addition, the celebs are wearing the signature clean-cut-and-colorful GAP style and makes the clothes look so good it would be hard to pass up stopping into a GAP store to take advantage of that 15% discount.

How does GAP's campaign compare to Office Max's 2007 "Elf Yourself" campaign? First and foremost, does anyone even remember what "Elf Yourself" was actually promoting? It's hard to deny the GAP brand in its promotion since the style of the ad and interactive media is consistent with that of past GAP campaigns. Also, the user is taken to the actual GAP website rather than a sister site - an important detail considering Nielsen Online's recent report that holiday shoppers will spend the majority of their money shopping online this holiday season.  The user can receive 15% off at GAP just for sending an email and the receiver is given the same offer - 15% off is a lot of money in today's economy. Additionally, each streaming ad features a list of the styles seen so the viewer can easily match the look.  GAP's holiday campaign definitely has the ability to hit it big this holiday season.

Check out my mix!