Msg 4 gr8 fashion

By Rhiannon McGregor 10 : 11 : 2016 Backlash Brands : Opt-In Culture : Text Commerce

London – Fashion graduate Abzal Issa Bekov is generating a sense of intrigue with his opt-in advertising campaign.

Bekov explores the phenomenon of sexting by encouraging people to text a WhatsApp number in exchange for collection photos
Messages will be replied to sporadically in person rather than using AI technology

A number encouraging users to ‘WhatsApp Me!’ and a figure shrouded in shadow are the only visual stimuli on Abzal Issa Bekov’s website.

As the campaign’s creative director Philipp Humm explained to LS:N Global, the decision to showcase the Central Saint Martins graduate’s collection entirely on WhatsApp was a way of parodying the anonymity and ambiguity that are so integral to many of our online exchanges.

As the website is manned sporadically, users must wait until Bekov comes back online to receive a unique combination of two images from the campaign, mimicking the intermittent nature of real-life WhatsApp exchanges.

‘People are employing new filters that block out everything they don’t want to see. That’s technological filters as well as cognitive ones,’ says Humm. ‘One way to get through to them is to make them curious.’

The Big Picture

Brands are foregoing the mass marketing approach and instead turning to opt-in advertising to nurture a sense of secrecy and exclusivity. See the Opt-In Culture section in our Backlash Brands macrotrend for more.