Crafting An Online Marketplace For A Brand Built On Stories
When beauty & personal care manufacturer Belcam Inc. came to us with a vision for their new fragrance line, we were tasked with bringing their vision to life online. Inspired by the power of scent to invoke vivid memories and transport us back through time, they created a line of unisex eaus de toilette for smelling good while reliving your favorite moments from the past. Introducing Anecdote.
The Anecdote line consists of five distinct fragrances, each one an ode to a different memorable experience. As we began the web build process for anecdotefragrances.com, it became immediately evident that we had a handful of unique challenges ahead of us:
Nailing the positioning of the Anecdote brand as a whole
Effectively communicating the story behind each of the line’s five scents
Selling a fragrance users probably haven’t smelled before
Letting The Stories Speak For Themselves
An experience-based product with an experience-based premise, we knew that the visual elements of the website would need to do a majority of the heavy lifting for communicating Anecdote’s collection of stories. So we decided to start this project in the same place where many other great projects begin: Pinterest. Our content specialists and design team teamed up to create moodboards for each scent to ensure that we had the visual elements of the website in the bag. These moodboards went on to inspire the final collection of photographs that appear throughout the site.
When we identified what the Anecdote brand looked like, it was time to determine how it would sound. Before jumping headfirst into the content creation process for the website, our marketing services team took to the drawing boards to sketch Anecdote’s personality as a brand. We personalized Anecdote by way of questions that dug deep into Anecdote’s character, motivations, and desires. By the end of this process, we knew with certainty what Anecdote was and was not, how the brand wants people to feel, and how it talks about itself and its collection of fragrances.
Guiding Users Through Their Memories And A Navigable Marketplace
Choosing a layout that would best highlight our highly curated photography, we crafted and customized a Shopify solution enabling users to easily navigate from fragrance to fragrance while inviting them to live inside each unique story. While, the majority of the site is black and white, the product and experience images stand out in vibrant color.
Recognizing that the client had a small number of products to start with but the potential to expand its offering down the line, we knew Shopify was the right fit for this project from the beginning. Having an accurate tax collection was also a vital requirement for this client, something that Shopify could easily handle right out of the box. Together with the benefit of a wide range of available plugins, Shopify’s offerings enabled us to create an effective eCommerce website built with room to grow.
Targeting An Audience (And Building A Community) That Relates
A fragrance line created with a millennial and Gen Z audience in mind, we knew that Anecdote’s social media strategy was as important as the design of its website. We built a presence for the vegan, gluten-free fragrance line from the ground up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Using native management tools like Facebook Business Manager and Pinterest’s recently launched Business hub, we carefully calibrated each profile for collaboration and success. Working closely with Anecdote’s team to ensure our messaging aligned with their goals, we utilized a strategy to support the new eCommerce site and further develop each of Anecdote’s five stories.
The result: a fully realized social presence where each post is treated as an opportunity to inform audiences of Anecdote’s clean formulation and characterize the feelings, experiences, and sensations that inspired each scent.
