Tiffany's UGC App

My girlfriend loves Tiffany's. Cliche as it may be, she loves it. I could buy polished scrap metal and wrap it in one of their holiday gift boxes, and her eyes would light up when she opened it. As the pinnacle of class and timeless sophistication, Tiffany's has mindshare on both men and women alike. As a man, you look wealthy if you can buy it, and as a woman you look elegant if you wear it. It's a win win, which you cannot often say about gift-giving.

Recently, Tiffany's launched an application that allows customers to capture their Tiffany's moment, and upload it to a virtual map anywhere on the globe. Aptly titled: "Love is Everywhere" this app enables users to make their most memorable romantic moments live forever online. As a marketer within social media, I am constantly challenged with creating interactive brand experiences. Story telling and experiential sharing speaks to the core of the communication shift each of us interacts with every day - and the effort is a fantastic example of creative thinking and design, but they only got it half right.

One thing I avoid like the crazy drunk relative at a wedding is microsites. They are useless. Unfortunately, clients want them all the time, and creative shops big and small are banking on designing, building, hosting and managing them. Microsites die after you stop driving traffic to them, and they are not intrinsically social environments. For an execution like the above, the most logical environment for the app to live is on Facebook or Tumblr; not a remote microsite. Worse yet, there is no social sharing built in to this, which is really 101 in today's social media marketing universe.

In short, Tiffany's did a great job on the creative. It works well, it's sexy, it's fun, it's memorable and buzz worthly, but it's not in the right place, and as we all know, location is key. For more info on the details of this creative push, including the Ed Burns short film: "Will You Marry Me?" click here - http://press.tiffany.com/News/NewsItem.aspx?id=129