Facebook "likes" brought to clothing racks

Since Facebook made their changes with the Like button and social graph earlier this year, I’ve noticed more and more examples of Facebook being integrated not only with our online lives, but with many different areas of advertising and marketing. I’m not talking about just slapping a Facebook logo in the corner of a Magazine ad, but making it a real, integrated part of our daily activities.
As a wannabe fashionista, it only makes sense that one of my favorite daily activities is of course, SHOPPING! Recently, while perusing mashable.com I found a great example of fashion marketing working hand in hand with real world Facebook interactions. Brazilian clothes retailer C&A has taken this concept of “liking things on Facebook” and simply applied it to their various in store outfits in a very literal sense. If, while browsing the shop’s racks, you find something you like, you can simply touch the Facebook-connected hanger and declare your feelings on the social network. Each piece of clothing has its own post on C&A’s Facebook page, and the likes have been piling up! The idea is that when a social network user happens upon the company’s page, they’ll be able to see the hottest items of the moment in an instant.
As a shopping enthusiast, I not only find this interesting, but very helpful – for example, when I’m browsing the racks solo, & have those indecisive moments of choosing between a few would-be-purchases it’d be wonderful to know the items’ popularity with other buyers in an instant. So what would you do – pick the popular jeans with more than 1,000 likes, or go under-the-radar and pick the jeans with only a couple hundred?
A more “shocking” example of fashion advertising & social media joining together in the real world would be a Stussy campaign titled “Strip for Likes.” A model on the Stussy website is seen wearing their full collection, and the more likes she gets on Facebook, the more clothing that comes off. Each click brings the model closer to stripping. This campaign does add a new twist to the new “social” fashion marketing genre, but does the model become more of a focus that the clothes?
C&A’s effort of intertwining Facebook and the real world is engaging, and a trend that I believe will most likely become more and more common.