The IPC Inspire Men & Music's website NME.comhosts bespoke microchannel for high street fashion brand River Island in it's first online fashion campaign. In a hugely competitive retail market, River Island were looking for a new and unique way to market themselves to men, and leverage brand association with a trend setting website thus placing them at the forefront of an otherwise alien audience. The aim of the campaign was to monitor awareness and see how perception of River Island changes when associating the brand with NME.com.

- Build awareness of the River Island brand - Generate traffic through to River Island site - Obtain credible brand association - Raise the profile of menswear & River Island as a men's brand

Online solutions included: - Bespoke microchannel integrated into NME.com, - 'Get The Look' editorial feature with hyperlinks to buy from Riverisland.com - Competition - Display ad placements driving users to the channel - E: Newsletter inclusions. Added value included pre and post campaign research to measure awareness, brand perception and fashion attitudes from the NME.com audience.

Feedback from River Island included: sales uplift amongst featured items, 295 unique users driven to riverisland.com from NME.com, increase in page activity once on the River Island Site (average pages looked at was 24) and 1300 competition entrants. The campaign achieved a fantastic click through rate of 0.16% which is significantly higher than the industry average (estimated to be between 0.03% and 0.07%).

Research was conducted internally through the IPC Insight team and was promoted on NME.com. The research shown that the average NME.com man (aged 24) spends £440 pounds on fashion every year -that's £114 more than the average UK man aged 24. Advertising with NME.com has given River Island the opportunity to enjoy some of that expenditure. stores. By associating themselves with a trendsetting brand such as NME.com, River Island have made themselves more accessible to an otherwise niche, young, cash ready and trend loving, bunch of shoppers.