Brief:
- Instagram debuted the first campaign to promote its in-app shopping features with a 60-second spot starring Celine Dion. The shoppable video shows the singer looking at the image-messaging app as she sings her hit "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" amid a curated selection of clothing items and accessories that users can buy through Instagram, according to a company blog post.
- Marc Jacobs, Michael Kors, Adidas and Oscar De La Renta are among the 18 brands featured in the video, which aims to capture the 1990s nostalgia that has been a popular theme on Instagram this year. When posted by the brands with shoppable posts enabled, the video has a shopping bag icon on the lower left that opens a list of the products users can buy directly through Instagram when tapped.
- Matt Lambert of the creative think tank Pretty Bird directed the video. Video stylist Mel Ottenberg said he looked at the fashion selection on Instagram to get inspiration for its nostalgic themes, Fast Company reported. Items from brands such as Michael Kors, Good American, Adam Selman and Revolve helped to capture the throwback feel of the video, he said.
Insight:
Instagram's first video spot for its burgeoning e-commerce platform is a clever way to highlight its new video shopping features with a native ad that captures the current zeitgeist around 1990s nostalgia. Dion released "It's All Coming Back to Me Now" in 1996, and the video's styling captures the era with a curated selection of products from top designers during peak holiday shopping season.
Social media apps like Instagram are becoming popular places to shop as the platforms evolve beyond their initial uses. The percentage of people who said they had used a mobile device to buy a product through social media rose to 57% in Q3 from 53% two years earlier, according to GlobalWebIndex. Instagram aims to capture a share of that spending during the holiday season with its latest campaign.
The campaign comes as Instagram ramps up promotions for its shopping features during the holiday season. Going into Thanksgiving weekend, it created a curated collection of products inspired by some of the year's biggest style trends that users could purchase without leaving the app. The collections were themed around popular Instagram hashtags from 2019.
Instagram in the past couple of years has gradually added features to integrate image-sharing with e-commerce, including shoppable posts from retailers and direct-to-consumer brands. Last year, Instagram introduced a dedicated shopping channel in its Explore tab and Stories, which string together images in a single post that disappears after 24 hours. It also created a collection tab to let users save products they've tagged in the app for a later purchase. After debuting Checkout on Instagram earlier this year, the app launched an @Shop account that users can follow to browse and buy from emerging and popular brands across a number of categories.
