After the project was complete, 100 early invitations to influential bloggers linked 781 sites in the Poppy trail which generated 47,000 tweets and 20,000,000 earned impressions in 30 days. This resulted in the project beating Burberry's ArtoftheTrench.com, Gucci's gucciguilty.com directed by Frank Miller (Sin City) and Yves Saint Laurent's yslmanifesto.com and was named #1 Social Media Campaign of 2010 by L2 in their anual Digital IQ report.

Ever since Saks Fifth Ave slashed prices on luxury labels by more than 70% back in 09 after a disappointing holiday season and nearly got sued by all of them, high fashion brands have regrouped and done their best to regain control. The huge backlash stemmed from simple branding 101 violation, a violation luxury fashion brands cannot afford: perception. Revealing how much their products could potentially be sold for (with supplier and retailer still making a hefty profit) changes the perception of their aspirational value forever. It was Walter Landor who proclaimed that “Products are created in the factory, but brands are created in the mind” and later Marty Neumeier reaffirmed this notion more simply, “It’s not what you say you are, it’s what they say you are”. So if the people say that, Creative Director of Louis Vuitton and solo designer Marc Jacobs, is very fashionable or ex-school teacher and punk-evangelist Vivienne Westwood is an influential figure in the industry, they rise to the top.

We live in a world of self-proclaimed media moguls, blogger titans and twitter wizards. Credible content creators like brand-conscious ex-ELLE editors Katherine Power and Hillary Kerr of WhoWhatWear.com and Christene Barberich who runs Refinary29.com with her stealthily curated RSS feed, are coming head-to-head with street fashionistas like Jessica of WhatIWore.com and Jak & Jil's infamous Tommy Ton. Further competition includes collective style sites like Lookbook.nu and Stylecaster.com which are spawning young stylistas like 13 year old Tuuli all over the blogger-sphere. Her Stylecaster profile and Lookbook.nu looks are only 2 of 8 platforms where she’s present online. It is without wonder she was named teenVOGUE blogger of the moment this past June. This is by no means ignoring actual media moguls like Ashton Kutcher, Kanye West, and up-and-coming designers/TV celebs like The City’s Whitney Port. This is what a cluttered online environment looks like.

If people really are the most important part of a branding project, then a project that invites you to tweet love with your brand’s name as a hashtag and, in return, offers unique product giveaways can only generate positive chatter. Sure, Coach has dabbled in blogger campaigns here and here, but, in 2010, aligning your brand with bloggers of similar style and creating a creative project with lucrative incentives is how you create planned organic conversation.

The Coach Poppy project is a social media
Art Project powered by conversation and tweets.

In case you haven't noticed, the vine on the right blooming multi-coloured poppies is the Poppy pattern. Draw with a tweet is the Coach Poppy Art Project concept and it all works with a unique hashtag identifying a registered URL (eg. http://helloVlad.com), a general hashtag for the entire project (#CoachPoppy) and secret “active” words (eg. yellow, blue). Social media projects like this are about creating conversation around interesting topics, and this project uses hashtags in tweets to make the pattern grow more poppies on each blog and reveal prizes for the viewer. Plus, the more people tweet, retweet, Facebook “like” and blog Coach Poppy, the more the pattern grows and the bigger the chance for the daily prize to end up on the most active pattern. The pattern knows which website to grow on by using both hashtags (eg. #hello and #CoachPoppy) in a single tweet, and all participating sites are grouped in a neat Poppy trail.