This May, American Tourister, the travel luggage brand from Samsonite brings to India its global positioning of ‘Young, International & Colourful’. The brand has launched the ‘Live Fashionable’ campaign to portray the luggage brand as a stylish companion to the consumer’s stylish personality. A set of 4 TVCs conceptualized by Taproot India have been rolled out under the themes of ‘fashionably late’, ‘fashionably independent’, ‘fashionably friendly’ and ‘fashionably lost’.

I’ve loved each one of them but the film on ‘fashionably friendly’ has to be my favourite. In the short film, a girl is shown waiting at a bus stop on a deserted road. The bus stop is just a pole with no seating arrangement. Just then a guy comes around wheeling his American Tourister suitcase and seats himself on it. While the girl looks on dejectedly as she has been standing for a while now, the guy turns his suitcase breadthwise so that it can now seat two people. The girl takes the seat and they both shake hands.

The campaign has leveraged the power of social media to extend the positioning on to social. The TVCs have been introduced through social media too, where the community has been encouraged to watch the commercials by incentivizing them with brand prizes.

#LiveFashionable contests themed around the TVC invited fans to watch and share the TVC while tagging their friends. Fans were asked to share their most fashionable excuse for arriving late for the ‘fashionably late’ film, while they had to name that one friend with whom you would share the only seat for the ‘fashionably friendly’ ad.

The contests run both on Facebook as well as Twitter gave away American Tourister backpacks. Additionally, the brand created Vine videos to introduce sneak peek of the #LiveFashionable campaign.

Fashionably boring on social

The brand has resorted to a dull strategy to spread the new proposition of #LiveFashionable. Creating Vine videos and engaging the community with simple contests, might just not be enough, if you want your target community of fashion conscious people to notice. American Tourister could engage and involve its community on social in more creative ways.

When Skybags from VIP wanted to promote its new backpack collection for the youth, it got them all worked up clicking selfies with a twist. The new ad emphasized that ‘back is the new front’ with VIP Skybags, while showing youngsters doing everything backwards including cycling, in order to show off their stylish backpacks. On social, it got fans to share their ‘reverse selfies’ where they had to show off their unique style with their backs facing the camera either with the help of a mirror or getting it clicked by someone. This innovative trick did it for the brand. It got the trendy social media-savvy folks to sit up and watch.

That magic, however, is missing in American Tourister’s #LiveFashionable campaign. Although the TVCs are perfectly fashionable, the social media engagement does not live up to it.