After a massive amount of work for the entire team I work with I am proud to announce the new global, multi-lingual, e-commerce enabled brand site for ghd hair stylers. www.ghdhair.com

ghd are the premium brand in their hair styling category and are synonymous with fashion, quality and style. We have stuck with the theme of elegance and simplicity throughout and tried to show these beautiful products in the most seductive way we could.

The project encompassed a huge amount of work including; e-commerce, global variations, link strategies, content, strategies, development cycles, creative guidelines, promotional accommodation, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Affiliate Marketing, considered Information Architecture, wireframing, E-CRM and much much more.

Now that this beast is live it will only grow and change constantly, especially with the country territories able to cherry pick their own changes, offers and content all centrally created and managed by our team, so I look forward to seeing how my baby grows up.

There has been a lot of stakeholders in this and every one with a valid point of view. The road is often shaped by compromise, but all said and done, I think it’s a great piece of work and here’s to making it stronger and stronger with time.

Filed under: My Work on May 30th, 2008 | No Comments »

Hot on the tail of the new global ghd site going live is the first campaign to feature. The campaign is called ‘Dark or Pure?’ and is a duo of Limited Edition stylers. One high gloss black with matching plates and the other in white.

The over-arching campaign idea is the choice of dark and seductive or bright and confident. Like the idea or not, but the execution was very visually led using the world-famous Rankin for the model photography.

The idea of the styler choice reflecting a part of yourself was the nugget with which the online element was to work with.

The activity was split into two phases; teaser, then reveal. The former centered around asking a series of fun questions with the intention of deriving the mix of darkness and purity within the user. Then the user was asked to make decisions on a friends personality and send that to them, so then, they could evaluate themselves in addition. Thus having a more rounded result based upon a friends opinion as well as their own. (Those who have heard of a Johari window will get the idea).

The comm’s plan was then to stagger 3 emails that would bring all database registrants back to the site revealing further clues to the nature of the teaser running over a two-week period keeping them engaged until the reveal.

The final reveal would simply showcase the stylers themselves in a large-format and premium video alongside the photography by Rankin. A simple call to actions then takes them to the product pages on the ghd website which went live at the same time to purchase.

Mainly using Flash and a serious amount of motion graphics and video, the idea was simple, effective, but also eye-catching. And all delivered in 10 languages. A fun job all round.

Filed under: My Work on May 23rd, 2008 | No Comments »