Fashion Flash

Brandweek, Oct 9, 2000 by Ann M. Mack

British digital design shop Deepend opened its U.S. offices and faced a major challenge with its first big brand-name client, Kenneth Cole.

Even before the boxes were unpacked in the New York office of Deepend, the digital design shop landed a major client in Kenneth Cole. The British import, which invaded Manhattan and San Francisco in June, was charged with the redesign of two of the fashion designer's e-commerce sites--the marquee KennethCole.com and its sibling ReactionOnline.com.

THE CHALLENGE

Deepend sought to design Web destinations that married Kenneth Cole and Reaction's offline brand image to its online image, while creating a more functional e-commerce template for the sites. "We wanted what we did online to be similar to the [offline] campaign," says Iti Sakharet, creative director at Deepend, New York.

THE TIMELINE

Kenneth Cole lost its previous Web resource and invited Deepend at the last minute. The agency had to turn around creative and execute the redesign in less than three weeks.

THE BILLINGS

For the fashion sites' redesign, billings amounted to $124,000.

THE CREATIVE

To create a cohesive brand image from one medium to the next, Deepend borrowed from the look and feel of the fashion lines' offline marketing and advertising campaigns. "If you pick up a URL from a billboard, you want [the site] to be consistent," explains Sakharet.

Despite wanting to maintain continuity, team Deepend realized that it wasn't merely a cut-and-paste process. "It's not a replication," continues Nun Javit, the agency's director of marketing. "How do you translate a static ad campaign to an emotive, interactive medium?"

Instead of parroting the print ads that have become signature Kenneth Cole--crisp photography of beautiful people in trendy clothes surrounded by grayish hues--they enhanced the images, as evidenced by the Flash intros on both sites.

Upon entry to KenethCole.com, visitors experience moving lines and pictures that envelop each other. Once on the navigation page, users can roll the mouse over vertical windows containing Kenneth Cole models to view different images.

Staying true to the laid-back nature of the Reaction brand, the Flash intro at ReactionOnline.com immerses visitors in a sea of clouds while fashion photos fade in and out, and the sound of a rainstorm and the soft beat of cymbals provide mood music. "We looked at [the Flash intros] like a theatrical trailer for a movie--a 30-second experience," says Javit. Although Flash isn't carried throughout the sites, Deepend was careful to do a smooth transition from active to static elements.

THE PHILOSOPHY

On both sites, Deepend presented a clean, uncluttered design. The c-commerce pages contain only the necessary navigation tools and a simple row of photos displaying requested apparel or accessories. Shoppers can click on the photos to enlarge them and find out further details, and from there, they can make purchases. This minimalist approach won the approval of Kenneth Cole himself, the agency boasts. After initially adding unnecessary graphics and enlarging the logo at the suggestion of some execs at the fashion house, "Kenneth Cole said the logos were too big," reports Javit. "He stripped it down so much so that it returned to where we were at the beginning."

The synergies between the sites include a shared shopping cart feature that lets users shop across sites and links leading to each other's sites. Yet, Deepend struggled to keep Reaction, which targets post-college-age shoppers to late 20-something fashion connoisseurs, separate from Kenneth Cole, which reaches out to 25- to 35-year-old affluent professionals. While some audience overlap occurs, Deepend attempted to maintain a clear distinction between the brands. "In terms of design, the look of the Kenneth Cole Web site is cleaner and presents a more sophisticated reflection of Cole's target market. We had to make sure that it was interpreted as the premier brand," explains Sakharet. "The Reaction site is somewhat more playful and much richer in its graphic execution ... It has more attitude than Kenneth Cole." Javit adds: "But we had to make sure that Reaction was not too edgy, not too dirty, still accessible."

THE PROCESS

Cole's own team built the site and middleware to plug into the existing backend, which proved a challenge to Deepend, an agency that usually develops entire sites from back to front. "We wanted to maintain the integrity of the site," says Sakharet.

Throughout the process, Deepend creative directors worked closely with Kenneth Cole's in house creative department to successfully bridge the brand from the offline world to the digital environment. "Our chief concern was that the look and feel of the Web sites be on brand, while providing the right level of direction and quality control," says Sakharet.

To simplify the process of adding and updating content, Deepend designed templates for the sites, so later versions could be completed in house without starting from scratch. "We designed grids, where you can change the colors from season to season, and you can change the pictures," says Sakharet. The homepages don't adhere to the template rules, however. "The homepage is loose because that's the first screen you see. It's a nice place to change the look and feel."