Stella McCartney Launches Mobile Campaign with Millennial Media

Luxury fashion brand Stella McCartney is entering the world of mobile advertising this holiday season with an interactive campaign on the Millennial Media network.

The effort, which launches today and runs through the end of January, is just one component of a larger multimedia campaign that includes print, direct mail, PR and Internet components. It is the first time Stella McCartney has advertised to mobile audiences.

The centerpiece of the mobile campaign is a series of clickable banner ads. Clicking on the ads will bring smartphone users to a Stella McCartney mobile Web site where they can browse several of the designer’s collections .

Although consumers cannot make purchases off the site, they can locate the store nearest to them and sign up for e-mail alerts.

“This is a standard first-level mobile [campaign],” said Eric Eller, SVP of products and marketing with Millennial Media. “The point of the campaign is brand positioning, getting it in front of an audience at the right time, when they are in shopping mode.”

The ads will appear on about a dozen sites in the Millenial Media network, according to Eller. While Eller didn’t name specific sites where the ads would appear, he said they would be “a mixture of weather, entertainment, news and retail — content that lends itself to consumption when people are out of home.”

Because Stella McCartney didn’t have an existing mobile presence of any kind, Millenial Media designed the creative for the campaign in addition to placing it on its network. Eller said the network takes on creative chores for about 30 to 40 percent of its customers.

“Our sales force works with the agencies and the clients to determine whether [the client] has a mobile site that lends itself to the campaign,” he said. ” We will then either recommend a third party or develop [the creative] ourselves. That will happen less and less as clients roll out their mobile Web sites.