Ted Baker's Stylish Homage to Seventies Suburbia

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Forget keeping up with the Joneses - they're so last season, daaahling. For spring/summer 2017, the neighbours you really want to be emulating are the Bakers - or so says British fashion retailer Ted Baker, in an ambitious new campaign.

Launched yesterday across the UK and Europe, Keeping Up With The Bakers, is a tongue-in-chic homage to suburban life and 70s sitcoms, set in the pastel-hued utopia of Tailor's Lane (geddit?) and starring the freakishly perfect - and immaculately-clad - Baker family.

Part Desperate Housewives, part '70s British sitcom, it's got a fluffier feel than Ted Baker's previous offering (the slick, Guy Ritchie-backed spy caper Mission Impeccable) but is similarly ambitious in its use of innovative OOH and digital shopping tech - areas the brand has been making a name for itself in recent years.

Long-term brand collaborators Crowns & Owls shot the campaign film [top], which follows ""the scandalously stylish adventures of [a] seemingly perfect family"" via a 360° shoppable lookbook, which can also be viewed as a non-shoppable VR experience in Google Cardboard, if you want to live out your Wisteria Lane fantasies in full.

For traditionalists who'd prefer to visit (gasp!) a physical store, head down to Ted Baker's London branches, where interactive windows created by Nexus Interactive Arts encourage shoppers to embrace their inner nosy neighbour and net curtain-twitching tendencies. By placing your hands onto the shop windows, you'll set off sensors and a camera will snap a photo, which is then digitally composited into a window installation.

Alongside this, the flagship store on London's Regent Street uses so-called 'Whispering Window' tech, that turns the window into a speaker with sound effects that create an immersive environment.

Meanwhile on the social side, digital agency POKE (who also worked on Mission Impeccable) has been running a competition through a 'hacked' interface on Instagram Stories, encouraging followers to finish gossip stories on the Bakers' TV channel by uploading selfies, commenting or tagging a friend. Followers can then click through a new selection of five different 'TV channels” to access soap opera-style content and reveal the winner.

To view the shoppable film and additional content, visit Ted Baker.