Flair: Fashiontag

Flair: Fashiontag

Women are always looking for inspiration for their wardrobe and most of the time they find this inspiration by looking at other women.

This inspired agency Duval Guillaume to create a Flair Fashiontag Facebook app for Belgian women’s magazine Flair. In the app, instead of tagging people, you can tag people’s clothes or accessories and ask them where they got them.

All fashiontags are displayed in a Facebook gallery, and the best are published in the weekly edition of Flair. This way there is constant interaction between the Facebook application and the magazine itself.

Turning social curiosity into a repeatable format

The mechanism is a simple swap. Replace social tagging of people with social tagging of products. A photo becomes a shoppable question. The owner of the outfit becomes the source. The magazine becomes the curator that elevates the best finds from feed to print.

In fashion and lifestyle publishing, converting casual “where did you get that” moments into a structured loop is a practical way to keep community activity and editorial output feeding each other.

The smart move here is to treat wardrobe curiosity as a content engine, not as a side effect of social chatter. The real question is how to turn that curiosity into a repeatable loop that helps readers in the moment and gives the magazine something worth curating.

Why it lands

This works because it formalizes a behavior that already exists. People already look at outfits, notice details, and ask friends for sources. Fashiontag simply gives that behavior a native interface and a public gallery, then adds a prestige layer by featuring the best tags in the weekly magazine.

Extractable takeaway: If your audience already asks each other for product sources, build a lightweight format that captures those questions in the moment and rewards the best contributions with visible amplification.

What to steal from Fashiontag

  • Swap the object of attention: tag the item, not the person, when product discovery is the real intent.
  • Close the loop with curation: a gallery is useful. Editorial selection makes it aspirational.
  • Make participation low-friction: one tag, one question, one shareable output.
  • Bridge channels on purpose: use print, site, and social as a single system, not separate campaigns.
  • Protect the social contract: ensure the person in the photo is comfortable with tagging and featuring, especially when content moves into a magazine.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Flair Fashiontag?

It is a Facebook app for Flair magazine that lets users tag clothes or accessories in photos and ask where those items were purchased.

What makes it different from normal photo tagging?

Normal tagging identifies people. Fashiontag identifies items. It turns fashion curiosity into a structured question-and-answer interaction.

How does the magazine benefit from the Facebook app?

The app creates a steady flow of wardrobe inspiration and real questions from readers. The magazine then curates and publishes the best tags, which reinforces participation.

Why is this a strong community mechanic?

Because it rewards helpfulness. People contribute sources and recommendations, and the gallery plus print selection turns that help into recognition.

What is the biggest risk in this format?

Consent and comfort. Tagging items in someone’s photo can feel intrusive if the person did not opt in, especially if content can be featured publicly in print.

Volkswagen Norway: Test drive in a print ad

Volkswagen Norway: Test drive in a print ad

You open a magazine and see a long, empty road. Then you hover an iPhone over the printed page and a Volkswagen appears to “drive” along that road on your screen. It is a test drive that happens inside a print ad, with summer and winter road versions depending on the magazine insert.

Volkswagen Norway builds this as a hybrid print and mobile experience. Readers are prompted to download an app, developed by Mobiento, that turns the printed road into a track. The phone becomes the controller and the page becomes the environment. The payoff is simple viewer control. You move the phone. The car moves with you.

An augmented reality print ad is a piece of print that a camera can recognize as a trigger. Once recognized, an app overlays a digital layer onto the page, anchored to the printed design so the interaction feels connected to the physical medium.

In European automotive marketing, the hardest part is making driver-assist feel concrete without getting people behind the wheel.

The experience is designed to demo three features in a way print usually cannot. Lane assist, adaptive lights, and cruise control. It is not a real test drive, but it is a clear and surprisingly tactile explanation of systems that are otherwise hard to “feel” from a magazine spread.

Why this works as an explanation engine

By “explanation engine” I mean a format that lets someone experience a feature benefit in seconds, not just read about it. Driver-assist features are abstract until you see them respond to a road situation, and this setup works because the printed road plus the phone’s motion becomes a simple input loop the viewer can control. This kind of demo is worth doing when the feature’s value is easier to show than to describe.

Extractable takeaway: When the benefit is behavioural, make the user’s motion the control and the physical asset the scenario.

What the campaign is really doing for the brand

This is a positioning move as much as a product demo. It says Volkswagen brings technology into everyday life and it does it with familiar media, not only with future-facing formats. Print becomes the doorway into a mobile experience, and that contrast makes both feel more interesting.

The real question is whether your media choice can carry the product story without needing a live demo.

What to steal for your own print-to-mobile idea

  • Make the printed asset the interface. The road is not decoration. It is the input surface.
  • Choose features that benefit from simulation. Assist systems and “smart” behaviours are ideal for quick demos.
  • Keep the interaction one-step. Download, point, move. Anything more kills curiosity.
  • Provide two contexts. Summer and winter versions make the concept feel robust and replayable.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “test drive in a print ad” in simple terms?

It is a magazine ad that works with an iPhone app. When you hover the phone over the printed road, the app overlays a car on screen and lets you simulate driving along the page.

What features does the VW print-ad test drive demonstrate?

The experience is built around lane assist, adaptive lights, and cruise control, using the printed road as the scenario that triggers the system behaviours.

Why is this better than a normal print ad for tech features?

Because it shows behaviour, not descriptions. The viewer sees the system respond in a road context, which is more memorable than reading about it.

Is it accurate to call it the world’s first?

Volkswagen Norway bills it that way, and the work is widely described as an early example of augmented reality applied to print as a functional “test road”.

What is the main risk with print-to-app activations?

Friction. If install or recognition is slow, people stop. The first payoff has to arrive quickly so the novelty turns into understanding.

AXA: Mobile Service Home i-Mercial

AXA: Mobile Service Home i-Mercial

In 2010, AXA was the first insurance company in the market to launch an iPhone application for car insurance. In 2011, AXA took this one step further and developed an iPhone application for fire insurance.

“Mobile Service Home” is described as a first for the Belgian insurance market, so the product was launched with a method designed to feel just as inventive. AXA and ad agency Duval Guillaume Antwerp. Modem developed what they called an i-Mercial, a television spot for viewers to step into.

How the i-Mercial works

The mechanism is a second-screen bridge: the TV spot includes an on-screen code, and the viewer uses an iPhone to scan it. That scan unlocks an extended layer of the story on the phone, so you move from watching the house on TV to exploring what happened inside it on your own screen. Because the scan happens while the spot is still running, the viewer stays in the narrative and experiences the service logic instead of just hearing about it.

In European insurance markets, this kind of second-screen interactivity turns a passive TV spot into a hands-on service demonstration.

The real question is whether the second-screen bridge proves the service promise in the moment, not whether the format feels novel.

Why it lands

It makes “mobile service” tangible. If the promise is speed and guidance in stressful moments, an interactive format is a better proof than a claim.

Extractable takeaway: Interactive advertising works when the phone is used as a second screen to continue the story and demonstrate the service. The TV spot creates the prompt. The mobile interaction delivers the proof.

  • It gives the viewer control. The audience is not asked to remember a URL later. The action happens in the moment, and the phone becomes the interface for continuing the narrative.
  • It turns a CTA into an experience. Scanning is not a bolt-on gimmick. It is the creative idea, because it lets the viewer literally step into the ad.

Second-screen launch moves

  • Design the interaction to be immediate. If the action cannot happen in seconds, most viewers will drop.
  • Make the “next layer” worth it. The mobile extension should add narrative, clarity, or utility, not just extra footage.
  • Ensure the format matches the product. A mobile service is best launched through a mobile-driven interaction.

A few fast answers before you act

What is an “i-Mercial” in this case?

A TV commercial designed to continue on an iPhone, so the viewer can interact with the ad rather than only watch it.

How does the viewer “step into” the TV spot?

By scanning an on-screen code with an iPhone during the broadcast, which unlocks an extended experience on the phone.

Why is this a smart launch method for an insurance app?

Because it demonstrates mobile-guided service behavior immediately, instead of asking viewers to imagine how the app helps.

What is the main risk with this format?

Link rot. If the scan destination or app flow is no longer maintained, the core mechanic breaks and the campaign loses its point.

What is the most transferable lesson?

When you want people to believe a mobile service, make the first brand interaction mobile, interactive, and simple enough to complete in the moment.