The video content market is growing exponentially. People share all aspects of their lives with video content. Sometimes, it seems that people no longer find inanimate texts and photographs attractive. In this day and age, “video commerce” is emerging as an essential form of communication. Video commerce means using videos to promote and sell products, with TV home shopping being one of its archetypes.The home shopping market has steadily grown into an industry with KRW 20 trillion.

However, in recent years, the industry’s growth has been stalled by changes in distribution and consumption. TV programs are losing viewership, competition is on the rise, online mobile shopping is growing at a rapid pace, and target customer groups are getting older. To adapt to these changes in the market, Lotte Homeshopping partnered up with Plus X to develop a new video commerce brand powered by digital technologies.

The radio was the earliest form of home shopping platform. With advancements in the media industry, radios were gradually replaced by TVs, giving rise to the first-generation of video commerce. Today, the popularization of smartphone is driving the evolution into “video commerce 2.0.” Under video commerce 2.0, content creators distribute content via various channels, with mobile devices at the forefront. The types of video commerce content have become more diverse, ranging from branded content to live commerce. The rapid growth is fueled by the appeal of the content, their scalability, and convenience. We studied the types and nature of the evolving commerce, reasons for their popularity, and benefits for consumers. The findings led to our understanding of the essential value of video commerce: providing consumers with fun, comfortable, and diverse shopping experience.

According to a survey on mobile shopping app trends, the “MZ” generation accesses shopping apps most frequently to “purchase products.” However, they access the apps as frequently when they are bored or need some rest. For the MZ generation, shopping is more than buying things they need. It is a form of entertainment where they purchase the fun and experience along with the products. Video commerce provides just that. The MZ generation cites communication and fun as the main reasons for using video commerce. Content creators also value self-contentment much as actual profit they earn from their activities. We concluded that a successful brand that creates synergy with today’s trends should be a commerce network offering fun and shared experience.

To identify the values for our new brand, we analyzed the company’s capabilities, expectations, image, and operations. Lotte Homeshopping can support the new service with its distribution services, the expertise of its merchandisers, and its image as a lifestyle company. The company seeks to provide customers with “familiar services that reflect creators’ and consumers’ lives as they are,” which is consistent with the company’s expectation for a “reliable and friendly commerce platform containing life logs.”

Changes in media use, competition between products, and digital omni channels have blurred the boundaries within the distribution industry. Home shopping firms also face all out competition with other distributors. However, it also creates an opportunity to launch new businesses and access larger markets. To identify these opportunities, we looked into which values similar service platforms use to attract customers. Most companies choose suitable images from the category-defining attributes such as easy, fun, and sincere, and consolidate its standing among the brands in the market. We decided to take a different approach, proposing values that create preference, rather than relying on attributes defined by the present category.

We captured the new brand’s essence and ultimate goal in a single word: Sync. Sync means synchronization among consumers, platforms, and their ideals. It is about accessing, sharing, and selling our experiences with like-minded people, building trust among users, and benefiting from the process. 

To secure a distinguished position in the market, we felt that we needed to create a brand name that captures the values of the brand. Wyd is a brand name imbued with our home that WYDERs will more clearly visualize their days in life and widen their life domains, and build up their life logs using our services.

When launching a brand, it is crucial to repeatedly expose people to the name and values of the brand. For this reason, we felt to need for an easy and precise slogan that aptly represents the wyd name and values. The result is [PLAY WYD, LIVE WIDE]. It is an encouragement to “play” in the world of infinite content and enjoy the “wide” world “live.”

The design principles of WYD are Easy and Lively, Refined and Clear, Balanced and Thoughtful. They derive from the brand’s three core values - Enjoyable, Reliable, Useful and thus ensure a consistent visual expression of the brand identity.

Wyd’s brand logo design was inspired by the three buttons used for videos : Record, Play, and Pause. The design emphasizes the common experience of video commerce users, where they record their lives (Record), share them with others (Play), and search / purchase / share products for a complete shopping experience (Pause). Various shapes are combined with “w” from wyd, creating a symbol for a platform combining diverse content and values.

The color scheme for the wyd brand was driven by two directions: create new energy for  the brand without inheriting Lotte’s color scheme (red); and create a brand color scheme that enhances visual recognizability. With the two directions in mind, we analyzed the color schemes of our competitors to find colors previously unused by other platforms. We ultimately developed a color scheme that does not overlap with the traditional Lotte color and offers visual recognizability both online and offline. We use the colors across the brand’s touch points.

Wyd’s key visuals consist of graphic elements representing various categories within the  platform. Each element is scaled from the basic shapes (circle, triable, and square)  comprising the wyd logo.The key visuals can be used in videos, images, and texts, and can be scaled for use as various interactive elements in the wyd UI. 

In wyd, anyone can become a vendor (wyder). Wyders choose their favorite products,  make videos featuring them, and share and sell the videos to like-minded users. Content creators are in the best position to tell consumers why certain products are better. They create videos about the products they want to share with other users, and also profit from their creations.