How Wet Seal created customer engagement

How Wet Seal created customer engagement
Tags: Customer Experience, Marketing, Social Media
April 16, 2011

Want to engage your customers? One way to do it is with a contest. But how do you create a successful contest, one that pulls customers?

Wet Seal Senior Vice President of eCommerce and Chief Information Officer Jon Kubo, who spoke at the National Retail Federation's 2011 Innovate conference, shared how the teen apparel and accessory retailer used a combination of social media and in-store visits to involve its audience.

To become a model, customers were invited to submit a head shot and a full body shot (no lingerie, nudity, or obscenity), along with an entry form. They had to go online to get the form, but, the brilliant part was they had to go a Wet Seal store to drop it off. According to Kubo, that brought out 35,000 entrants who made 100,000 store visits. Clearly, no matter what happened next, the retailer was ahead.

But there were more benefits to come. Wet Seal officials narrowed the applicants down to 100, making sure there was diversity in everything from ethnicity to size. Each of the 100 was given a flip camera, valued at about $150, and asked to produce a one minute YouTube video, saying why she should be selected. The 50 most viewed videos were put up on the company site and its Facebook page.

Viewers got to vote for their favorites on Facebook, but to vote, they had to become a Wet Seal fan. The company acquired an additional 100,000 fans on its page.

To get people to view their videos, contestants put up their own Facebook pages, which made the contest even more viral. Kubo said in all there were 300,000 YouTube viewers, and 10 million Facebook feed posts.

Fan votes selected the best 25, and Wet Seal and Ford Modeling Agency selected a winner from the group. The Grand Prize winner received a $500 Wet Seal gift card, airfare to Orange County, Calif., a two-night hotel stay and a meeting with a Ford representative. The total value was approximately $1,500.

Did Wet Seal have to add staff to run the model search? Kubo said "the model search was run with an intern–it was run very lean." Certainly, in terms of what it achieved, the contest cost pennies. Kubo said of the company's audience, "Eighty percent of what they want is social recognition." This contest gave them that, so everyone came out a winner.