Ted Baker London's Expanding World of 360° Video

Ted Baker London's Expanding World of 360° Video

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Following last year's espionage-themed " Mission Impeccable," London brand Ted Baker is back with another shoppable video experiment. This time it's a 360-degree experience where you can hang out with the Baker family in their perfect surburban home and shop their looks.

Check out the shoppable video here. The version embedded above is not shoppable but still offers a chance to poke around the world of the Bakers.

Just in case you don't know: Ted Baker is not a real person and the Bakers are a fictional family. Ted Baker is the hero figure, invented by brand founder Ray Kelvin, whose world is flawless on the outside and ever-so-slightly messed-up underneath.

For a chance to get further into the shoppable 360° video, we'll have Google cardboard VR viewers on hand March 26 in our Oakbrook Center store in Oak Brook, Illinois, and our NorthPark Center store in Dallas. Come check it out. To us, virtual reality storytelling is a brave new world, and every step forward is exciting.

Keep reading for our conversation with Craig Smith, Ted Baker London's global brand communication director, about "Meet the Bakers" and why storytelling is part of the Ted Baker DNA.

SHOP: Ted Baker London Nordstrom: How much of "Keeping Up with the Bakers" your idea?

Craig Smith: I'm not going to take any credit. It's an enormous team effort. When you look at the breadth of all the activities in "Keeping Up with the Bakers," you see rich variety in the different content pieces, and that comes about because of the variety, depth of skills and ownership of people on the team. A really strong team.

And that's a team you lead?

Yes, and it's a delight. Having come from a graphic-design background in my very early days to now, where we develop this beautiful brand work, I'm impressed every single week with the ideas the guys develop, how they execute them and how commercially minded they still are. "Keeping Up with the Bakers" is an example of continuing to evolve the brand, online and offline. It's not easy to maintain the cohesiveness and effectiveness of the brand.

It must be fun to assign these fictional avatars to the Baker universe. Do you find that people unfamiliar with the brand think Ted Baker is a real person, and that maybe this family is based on his life?

Yeah, and we try to play up to that whenever we can. Actually it's one of the more fun elements to the work we do. We start with the backstory from Ted's perspective-one of his experiences. That's really where the guys jump off from. We're fortunate to be able to do that. We're fortunate to have a founder and CEO who was so clever in the early days, where that became part of our DNA. It's a fantastic opportunity.

How do you consider building out this world?

It depends on the season. There's a deeper and more narrative focus in the winter, as opposed to a lighter and more fun approach to spring and summer. Once we've seen the key elements of each collection, we feed that into some word play and word association. Copywriters start looking at little threads, stories, vignettes. Five or six ideas get developed and fleshed out. You'll start to see one or two strong themes emerge, which are further developed in outlines and storyboards. And before you know it, you're talking about this imaginary universe-it's about the narrative, how far you can push it and what the components of that narrative might be.

How long has there been this aspect of the Ted Baker brand that's slightly subversive, cheeky and messed-up underneath the perfection?

From day one. We've always had that point of view. We created the Ted Baker character before the first collection was even made. It all stems from our hero and his various life experiences, things he's captured on his journey. It's become broader and more cohesive, and also more complicated, as the business has grown.

So since day one it's been a mix of decorous, seemly outside with a twisted, slightly disturbed interior?

Absolutely. Our first five or six years, the tone had a very particular flavor. Then when we brought womenswear into it, that changed the dynamic in a nice way. We became more worldly. We've been able to add on so many layers and facets to the storytelling.

Specifically with the 360° video and being able to shop the looks on the characters, where did that idea originate?

When we sat back to do a washup after "Mission Impeccable," we talked about the three stories that wrapped up "Mission Impeccable Pt. II" and started to look at Christmas, started to build out ideas for spring. We felt we did a good job with these linear movies. What would be an added level of innovation that would not only test us as a brand, but test our team technically, and our partners WIREWAX? We had already had conversations about 360° videos that didn't come to fruition. We thought because of the way sets had been built for spring-these beautiful environments that all go together-might it be interesting to capture that in filming? We tested it and what came back was so lovely, we knitted it into what you see now.

Do you notice Ted Baker leading the way forward for shopping in 360° videos? It's exciting to be able to merchandize a virtual world without the constrictions of physical space.

We had that exact conversation around "Mission Impeccable," and I don't actually think it started a landslide of similar content. I do think it made other brands think about what they do and why they do it. Because of how we operate-we don't advertise in traditional, conventional ways-everything we do is about building out those rich stories. I don't think a lot of brands have within their DNA the methodology to do that. They default to big celebrity campaigns shot by a famous photographer or the celebrity themselves. Moving away from that would be difficult for many brands. Whereas for us, it's just part of the work we do.

Other brands maybe are addicted to referencing the zeitgeist, but Ted Baker London is a self-contained world.

Sure. And I think that's a real strength of the brand, you know? We've got this inherent desire to be creative. Ultimately that in itself has allowed us to play more freely in the creative space. I think also it's not that easy for brands or businesses to do things the likes of which they've never done before. If someone spent 20 years utilizing celebrities in big campaigns shot by famous fashion photographers, then tried to move to a dual-gender, story-driven narrative built out over an entire campaign, that's a drastically different way of working. We're fortunate that we have all of our functions in house. We have agencies to provide technical expertise we don't have, but creatively, we drive all that internally. Everyone is day in, day out, living the brand. It's a very difficult thing to do if you don't have it built into your brand.

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