Vidal Sassoon and HairPiHi

Sorry, HiPiHi.

HiPiHi has announced that Vidal Sassoon is partnering with them to launch ‘Midnight City’ – ‘China’s first-ever hair salon inside a virtual world environment’. This initiative follows the recent Intel announcement for HiPiHi.

Fashion and luxury brands are starting to realise the benefits of virtual world marketing, based heavily on the fact that avatars have a strong desire to customise their appearances.

Here’s the rest of this story, taken from the press release and also reported on Mobinode.

‘As a premium brand in the global haircare industry, Vidal Sassoon has always been at the leading edge of contemporary culture and fashion. Vidal Sassoon first unveiled the “Midnight Salon” concept in the fall of 2007 to haircare professionals worldwide. This concept is a response to the limitations of space and time placed on traditional methods of brand marketing and promotion, which has limited the typical consumer’s access to professional services. As the leading virtual world platform in China, HiPiHi provides strong technology backing and a strong suite of in-world creation tools to help “Midnight Salon” redefine brand marketing and consumer experience in the digital age.

Vidal Sassoon (VS)’ “Midnight Salon” will be divided into the themed interaction zones of “Fashion Live!”, “Popular Styles” and “Hot VS Products”, all of which will harness the technology of the HiPiHi platform to revitalize Vidal Sassoon’s real-world products by rendering them in virtual and importantly, socially interactive forms. In this virtual world salon, both consumers and professional hair stylists alike, will have unique avatars and be able to socialize, trade tips on haircare methods or recommend the latest styling trends and products.

In the HiPiHi-based “Midnight Salon”, a multitude of people; regardless of region, age, race and skin color, will be able to transcend their real world identities to freely access and enjoy innovative models of brand interaction and service. The dynamic confluence of technology and fashion opens up unimagined possibilities and choices for corporate brands and online consumers and is testament to the value of virtual worlds to real-world businesses.

Following the launch of “Midnight Salon”, Vidal Sassoon will continue to innovate and experiment with new virtual-world marketing models like 3-dimensional advertisements and word-of-mouth (“mouse”) marketing. Together, both companies believe the virtual world medium will continue to prosper with the continued entry of more business organizations that will quicken the pace of business innovation and build a richer ecosystem mirroring that of the real world. The future of virtual worlds is exciting indeed’