ShopDirect, the UK’s biggest shop-at-home group, turned to Shiny Red when it wanted to generate social media coverage and discussion for its new shopping site Very.

The concept behind very.co.uk is “social shopping” and the site features its own community giving product reviews and insights. Celebrities including Holly Willoughby and Fearne Cotton were also signed up to produce exclusive ranges.

Our brief was twofold – to raise awareness of the launch and celeb ranges online and to create content for the Very site for the community to engage with. For maximum impact at launch, we targeted both online influencers/bloggers and web communities.

For bloggers, we identified the most influential online fashion and celebrity bloggers. These were the gatekeepers to the 20- and 30-something style-conscious women Very wanted to target. We tailored our outreach to their needs including providing an extensive selection of images for them to run as photo galleries, and provided links back to very.co.uk to showcase core product lines.

For communities, we contacted Holly and Fearne’s sizeable fan followings on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Post launch, we ensured a steady stream of content to maintain interest and coverage.   We worked with Very ambassador, stylist Louise Roe, to film a series of shot-for-web videos on current fashion trends. The films were tagged with relevant keywords and offered to bloggers, as well as uploaded to very.co.uk as content for the community to debate .

On a daily basis, we proactively sourced comment opportunities for Very’s style experts to contribute to discussions on fashion forums and blogs, and to link back to products on the site. We also advised Very on its Facebook page.

Our efforts resulted in more than 30 blog posts in the first two weeks by influential UK fashion writers which resulted in organic SEO boosting the website’s Google page ranking.

The videos on Very and blogs were also viewed hundreds of times and ongoing relationships were established with leading fashion blogs.