Hugo Boss is complementing its traditional print ad campaign by promoting the brand's fall and winter 2011 collections on its iPhone application.

The free application features looks from the retailer?s BOSS Black, BOSS Orange and HUGO collections. It also guides consumers to local stores by using the device?s GPS.

?Luxury brand advertising historically would be in high-end magazines, like W magazine,? said Michael Burke, president and co-founder of appssavvy, New York. ?Those are not cheap places to be, they are expensive.?

?The effectiveness of those advertisements may be changing because readers? consumption habits are changing,? he said.

Hugo Boss is a fashion house that specializes in luxury men and women?s apparel, based out of Metzingen, Germany. The Boss Black collection is targeted at a business-oriented audience, while Boss Orange features younger pieces and Hugo is a more modern collection.

Matchmaker
The Hugo Boss iPhone application allows consumers to browse the current Boss Black, Boss Orange and Hugo collections. The ?Videos? tab shows footage from the runway and photo shoots, and a ?Store Locator? guides users to local Hugo Boss retailers.

Here is a screen grab of the applications homepage:

?An iPhone application may be a relatively inexpensive investment for Hugo Boss at this point to try out something new,? Mr. Burke said. ?It gets into where people are consuming content? they may be reading magazines on the phone rather than picking up the hard copy.

?Mobile phones and iPhones are fashionable,? he said. ?For a fashion brand to try and fit in with that, it has a natural fit. They?re very much like, ?Oh, iPhones are cool, we want to be cool.??

With the ?Color Matching? tab, the application lets consumers take photos of personal items to see if they will properly coordinate with Hugo Boss products.

The application is not transactional.

Hugo Boss did not return a call by deadline.

Here is another screen grab of the iPhone application:

You go, Boss
Using the coordination tab to promote its fall and winter lines is a useful and effective tactic, but Hugo Boss and other high-end brands do not need to necessarily create their own mobile applications, according to Mr. Burke.

To drive awareness to their mobile site and retail stores, Boss could have partnered with another application. Because millions of people are mobile, the application could have lived across mobile in general, rather than containing its features within an application.

The high-end retailer last year launched a multimedia mobile campaign to promote its Element fragrance. It targeted unconventional Italian males, reaching out to them by offering fragrance samples once consumers entered the mobile site (see story).

?Once you have somebody, you can show them the collections,? Mr. Burke said. ?What the brands are going to have to do to drive awareness is reach beyond the application itself.

?They have to focus on where the consumers are,? he said. ?They should look beyond their application into other existing applications? maybe use their existing application to engage the audience further by providing some sort of usefulness.?

Here are images from the recent Boss campaign that ran in W magazine?s September issue:

Final Take
Kaitlyn Bonneville, editorial assistant at Mobile Marketer, New York

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