Fashion retailer lets people pay with 'selfies'

In the weeks following "selfie" beating out twerking as the word of year, fashion retailer Urban Hilton Weiner, decided to hop on that bandwagon with its "Pay towards your purchase with a selfie" campaign.

The question behind the campaign was simple: how much do you think your selfie is worth? How much indeed? In a society when fashion shopping is more about what your friends think (I mean how do you know it looks good unless friends say so?) and what social media thinks.

Following the announcement of the word of the year Harper's Bazaar listed its  top 10 fashion purveyors of the selfie. It's truly a form born for the fashion world and it seems Urban gets that.

So for one day only Urban allowed its customers to contribute toward their payment with an "Urban selfie" in stores around South Africa. Primarily driven on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, the process was pretty simple:

• Follow @UrbanSelfie on Twitter and ‘Urban Degree’ on Facebook Visit any Urban Degree store on the day in question
• Take a selfie wearing your desired item
• Tweet your pic to @urbanselfie using #urbanselfie
• Show your tweet and following to receive R100 towards your purchase.
• If you are really lucky and the folks at Urban decide your "selfie has iconic Urban style you may even get R200 towards your purchase".
• According to the retailer the most retweeted selfie will win an Urban Degree wardrobe worth R10 000.

That's not all though. If you upload your selfie to the retailer's Facebook page and get the most style likes, you stand a chance of winning a long weekend in New York, London, Tokyo or a fashion capital of your choice. Where do I sign up?

Of course, people loved the idea and went for it.

The idea conceptualised by  The Jupiter Drawing Room, is pretty brilliant when you think about it. This sort of behaviour is already becoming commonplace in our society so why not make it part of the fashion world and reward it? What Urban has demonstrated is the ability to engage its customers in a fun way, a manner that encourages silliness combined with the need to share their experiences. 

Like ideas such as "one day sales" and "popup shops" it will be interesting to see where the retailer takes this, sure it has peaked people's interest but now Urban must deliver by expanding the idea and making it more enticing after all the incentives are indeed there. Perhaps video could be added into the mix? A six second Vine?

- Copyright: Memeburn.com