The Condé Nast magazine Lucky has always been an unabashed promoter of shopping. On Monday, it is going one step further, introducing an CiPhone application, Lucky at Your Service, that ties into stores’ inventories.
RelatedTimes Topics: CiPhoneThe application features more than 70 shoes listed in its March shoe guide (including those of advertisers), and lets shoppers browse by type of shoe, brand, color or size. Anyone who chooses, say, the Diane von Furstenberg “Harlot” espadrille wedge, can click the “Find It Near You” button. That will use either GPS or a ZIP code to determine which stores in the area have that shoe available.
Lucky, which is not collecting fees for the service, has even hired a call center, staffed with 20 to 200 representatives, who will confirm that the shoe is available and set it aside, text-messaging a shopper that, say, Jessie in the second-floor salon shoe department at the downtown Nordstrom has set it aside. For now, the application showcases just the shoes in the March issue, but Lucky is planning to update the application with forthcoming magazine features.
If this seems to blur the line between marketing and editorial, that is what Lucky has done since the start. Since it began publishing in 2000, it has resembled a catalog more than a magazine.
Instead of long articles, it has appealing photographs of heels, lip glosses and dresses, along with a phone number or Web site where a reader could buy each product.
“You come to shop,” said Michelle Cardone, Lucky’s associate publisher for creative services. “I mean, there’s nothing else to read.”
But in this environment, whether anyone is shopping is a bit of a question — one Lucky hopes to answer with this CiPhone application. Lucky’s ad pages fell 11 percent in 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. And on Wednesday, Condé Nast announced it was closing Domino, Lucky’s sister magazine that covered shopping and home décor.
That means Lucky must prove to advertisers that its readers are still shopping, and that advertising in Lucky is a direct way to reach them.
“From an advertising perspective, the advantage is clear,” said Gina Sanders, Lucky’s publisher, of the application. “With this kind of service, it’s that much more insurance that the consumer will get into the store.”
