Condé Nast bridal title makes mobile fashionable

By Dan Butcher

October 9, 2008

Jessica Alba is spokewoman for Revlon, one of Brides.com's top sponsors

Condé Nast's Brides.com will be streaming live mobile videos of bridal fashion shows to keep brides-to-be updated on the latest wedding dress trends.

Editors at Brides.com, Condé Nast's premier bridal destination Web site, are hitting the bridal runway shows with Nokia N75 mobile phones in hand to capture and stream the events live. This will give brides-to-be real-time access to bridal fashion.

“The strategy is to be able to provide our users with the most timely bridal fashion information,” said Pamela Sturchio Quandt, senior executive director of marketing and creative services for Brides.com and Condé Nast Bridal Media, New York.

“There isn't a better way to do that than providing a front-row seat and backstage interviews through live streaming video," she said. “Therefore, we are able to share our access with our users.” 

The Nokia phones are enabled with Flixwagon video technology.

Brides.com's homepage

With a backstage pass, editors will be capturing the action via mobile at the New York shows of leading design houses Amsale, Alfred Angelo, Christos, Platinum, Kenneth Pool, Priscilla of Boston, Reverie, Melissa Sweet and Vineyard.

In the past, Brides.com has posted photos of runway coverage and edited video clips shortly after the fashion shows wrapped.

“We challenged ourselves to come up with a way that would provide real-time access to bridal fashion, and we thought about streaming the shows, but traditional live streaming is complex and expensive,” Ms. Quandt said. “Our friend Jeff Jarvis of the BuzzMachine blog turned us on to Flixwagon, which provides free live streaming to anyone with a compatible phone.

“We worked with our IT department to choose the Nokia N75, set up Flixwagon on it and became mobile broadcasters overnight,” she said. “We plan on using the technology more for appropriate content going forward to give a bride real-time access to information she needs to plan her wedding.”

Brides.com will most likely be using iPhones in the future as well.

As a preview to the runway shows, the site's Wedded Bits blog will also feature sneak peek sketches from those labels, as well as from other top names.

These include Reem Acra, Atelier Aimee, Anne Barge, Edguardo Bonilla, The Cotton Bride, J. Crew, Ines di Santo, Jenny Lee, Peter Langner, Jenny Lee, Badgley Mishka, Jenny Packham, Piccione, Lela Rose, Angel Sanchez and Vera Wang.

Additionally, Brides.com editor in chief Michelle Preli will be posting her own insights into the bridal fashion show scene with regularly updated "Editor's Notebook" blog postings that will provide Wedded Bits readers with an insider's point of view at these exclusive designer events.

The special Brides.com runway feature package will go live on the Wedded Bits blog at http://www.brides.com/blog/weddedbits on Friday, Oct. 17.

Brides.com is utilizing a multi-pronged approach to get the word out.

“We will be promoting the shows heavily on our site through home page promotion and blog entries, as well as through an email to our opt-in database,” Ms. Quandt said. “We will tap in to our social network as well by utilizing the networks that we built on MySpace and Facebook. 

“We will be also communicating through the dress manufacturers,” she said.

Brides.com’s target demographic is females 18 -34 years old.

Brides.com is a premier bridal destination site, with more than 1.2 million unique users every month and 60 percent year-over-year growth in traffic. Brides.com has many high profile advertisers including Cartier, Revlon, Clinique, Vera Wang, Macy's Discover, Bloomingdales and Johnson & Johnson.

Brides.com's editorial team creates original content, develops interactive tools, cultivates an engaged community and provides an array of imagery and video to help the bride throughout her wedding-planning process.

Brides.com aggregates content from three national magazines—Brides, Modern Bride, Elegant Bride and 16 local bridal magazines.

Brides.com currently does not have a mobile version of the Web site.

“Our site is very application intensive; however, we do have plans in 2009 to roll-out specific mobile applications that we are not at liberty to discuss at the moment,” Ms. Quandt said. “Mobile will absolutely be part of the Brides.com experience going forward.

“Our brides are mobile users and we need to be wherever our brides are,” she said.