QUICK SUMMARY
Keen to gain attention from, and work with, fashion ecommerce providers, meepl appointed Luminous PR to launch their business and dramatically raise their brand awareness in the UK.
THE BRIEF
meepl was a Zurich-based tech company with an ambition to provide an easy and accurate way for online shoppers to find garments that fitted perfectly through the means of 3D body scanning using a smartphone. The state-of-the-art technology was particularly innovative because it created accurate avatars for ecommerce customers to use in virtual dressing rooms and went hand in hand with meepl’s ambition of supporting sustainability within the fashion industry. More confident apparel purchases = reduced returns and landfill contribution.
meepl wanted to work with UK retailers to improve size recommendations, helping consumers find the right clothes size for their measurements but also helping retailers reduce their costs sustainably. The challenge was they faced a rather sceptical audience. Online fashion retailers had been historically resistant to body-profiling technology. Competitors had previously tried to create sizing applications but the results were seen as unsophisticated, souring the appetite for meepl’s advanced innovation.
OUR APPROACH
We constructed a campaign that would catch the attention of both the fashion and retail industries, making them urgently reconsider the need for body scanning technology.
The campaign messaging was clear and convincing. Retailers are facing a sustainability crisis in the face of changing consumer shopping habits. All the evidence showed that brands had high return rates due to consumers purchasing more than one size of an item. This was inevitably hurting profits and creating a wasteful carbon footprint. By using body scanning technology, retailers could create a better experience for their customers as well as shift to a more efficient, cost-saving business model.
Our thought leadership strategy laid the groundwork; achieving stories and profile pieces that explained why consumers wanted more accurate size recommendations. As the ease of the Covid-19 lockdown measures were looming, these stories were complemented with unique survey statistics highlighting the dramatic shifts in consumer shopping habits. The commissioned survey results were hugely popular among journalists, even cited by the BBC’s influential Victoria Derbyshire on Twitter.
Our campaign team continued to collate stories that showcased how meepl’s technology was more sophisticated than anything else that had come before. As meepl was new on the scene, they didn’t have any client case studies so we created one, following Sorcha O’Donoghue’s frustrated attempts to buy the right sized clothes online. The approach worked well, securing coverage on the BBC with their feature article: Why are clothing sizes so erratic and can they be fixed?
After a hugely successful twelve-month PR campaign, meepl were acquired by Europe’s leading fashion and lifestyle platform Zalando.
CAMPAIGN HIGHLIGHTS
During the 12 months we worked with meepl, we:
- Gained just shy of 200 pieces of coverage.
- Secured stories in top-tier publications, including Financial Times, Daily Mail, BBC, The Mirror, The Times and Forbes.
- Reached an online readership of 2.94 billion.
- Received over 2,780 social shares and 3.34M views from media coverage.
CAMPAIGN SERVICES
- Launch consultancy
- PR outreach
- Thought leadership
- Newsjacking
- Case study creation
- Surveys
TARGET MEDIA
- National print and online media
- Trade retail, fashion, apparel and ecommerce press
- Investment, tech startup and entrepreneur publications
“Working with Luminous PR was a real pleasure. The Luminous team facilitated our conversations with high profile media, as well as dedicated and influential technology press, helping us to gain traction all the way to being acquired by Zalando.” – Ferdinand Metzler, meepl Founder and CEO
“Luminous helped us to position meepl as a leading platform for mobile 3D body scanning and virtual try-on’s in fashion e-commerce. As a startup, operating in a fast emerging fashion tech sector, Luminous was a great partner for public relations. We delivered the technology – and Luminous delivered it’s unique PR experience, responsiveness and creativity to help us reach national and international media.” – René Stampfl, meepl VP EMEA
COVERAGE
Here are some of our results:
The new high-tech tricks for a perfect fit – Daily Mail
Why are clothing sizes so erratic and can they be fixed? – BBC
One if five won’t go back into a clothing store – Sunday Mirror
Amazon tunes to new cloud wavelength – Financial Times
Get out and shop, PM to tell Britain – The Times
Software Sector Swings Further Towards ‘Industry-Specific’ Solutions – Forbes
Zara owners to close around 1,200 stores amid sales slump – OK! Magazine
Meet 10 sustainable fashion startups in Europe that you should know about – Business Insider
Victoria Beckham to cut 20 percent of workforce and downsize collections – Fashion United
Get out and shop, Boris Johnson tells Britain – Business Matters
Can Selfridges really make socially distanced shopping joyful? – Insider Trends
Five tech start-ups helping retail rebound – Retail Week
20% of shoppers say they’ll never shop in brick-and-mortar fashion stores again – Charged
One in five UK consumers will never return to the UK high street, research shows – Retail Times
Meet the founder of meepl – Just Entrepreneurs
