What Happened
Luxury fashion brand Coach has pulled its iOS app as part of a new mobile strategy to connect with consumers. After a few years of slumping sales, Coach is looking to right its course by going where consumers already are. The company revamped its website to make it mobile compatible and launched an iMessage app called Coachmoji to drive mobile engagement. Coachmoji, consisting of images from Coach’s collection grouped by themes, lets users share “inspiration boards” in chat. The company is planning to allow users to shop directly from the iMessage app.
What Brands Should Do
Coach’s strategy mirrors the ongoing trend of brands establishing a presence and reaching customers on emerging platforms. Other early-adopting brands such as Burger King, Disney, and Toyota have created branded stickers for iMessage. While it remains to be seen how Coach will execute its plan to add an ecommerce component to its iMessage app, it is commendable for adopting a mobile strategy that reflects the reality in mobile user behavior. While Smartphone users spend almost 90% of their time on devices using mobile apps, 90% of branded apps have fewer than 10,000 downloads. In contrast, eMarketer predicts that messaging apps will reach 80% of global smartphone users by 2018. With more and more people choosing messaging apps as their primary means of communication, more brands should start exploring the marketing potential of messaging platforms.
Source: Glossy