Gant Rugger Spring 2013 Campaign: Team Americano

Iconic eighties brand Gant Rugger unveiled their latest marketing campaign titled “Team Americano” turning traditional blogger outreach on its head. The fashion line, which was re-launched in 2010 under the creative direction of Christopher Bastin, features a handful of New York fashion bloggers as their actual models.

Shot in Florence while attending the Pitti Immagine Uomo men’s wear trade show, the campaign exists not only through the lens of Gant Rugger photographer Derrick Leung, but through the bloggers’ photography and posts on their own social media sites. The 6 amateur models include: Gabe Alonso (Senior Editor at Gilt Man), Justin Chung (fashion photographer), Zeph Colombatto (fashion writer), Noah Emrich (photographer), Sean Hotchkiss (photographer), and Lawrence Schlossman (Editor-in-Chief at Four-Pins.com). A quick click through their blogs will make even the sharpest urbanite feel sartorially challenged. Not surprisingly, all six were given free rein to style pieces from the Spring 2013 line themselves, affording the campaign a sense of un-studied studiedness.

Retail brand J. Crew executed a similar campaign last year called “Hello, World!” They hired blogger/photographer Scott Schumann (the Sartorialist) and blogger/illustrator Garance Doré to document 9 global stylemakers integrating J. Crew pieces into their wardrobe, allowing each to showcase their own personal sense of style. The images and videos were cross-pollinated over all three sites extending the mass brand’s reach into more independent fashion circles.

In both cases, the bloggers openly acknowledged being paid for their work, and in the marketing world, ROI would be the hard-and-fast rule to measure success. In the fashion world however, where brand reputations are born overnight but are also just as fleeting, building credibility through more indie sources can have a slow burn effect that is difficult to quantify. Mainstream brands like J. Crew (with style icon Jenna Lyons at the helm) and Gant Rugger (under the guidance of Christopher Bastin) have just enough cool factor to be plausibly leveraging this type of campaign. This semblance of authenticity is exactly what both brands are banking on, building on the street cred and social reach of these bloggers to create micro-campaigns beyond the mass campaign. Successfully navigating the fine line between blogger authenticity and paid advertising is a key to their success, and in many ways explains how both these brands are given license to blur those boundaries.

peter g

P&G Thank You, Mom

Anyone in the marketing industry – agency side, has at some point in the recent past either recommended, advocated, promised or suggested the need for creative to go viral. Unfortunately for all of us, the desire for anything to go viral and the reality of an idea doing so, is a divide that is not often breached. Cue the current P&G Thank You, Mom Olympic campaign. The 2012 TV spot has been in heavy rotation for the last 4 months leading up to the London games, so much so, that I actually checked out the full two minute commercial online (which I must admit still gets me a little watery-eyed). With the opening ceremonies underway, I was intrigued to find the music track for the spot by Ludovico Einaudi (“Divenire”) trending on YouTube today with over 1.2 million views. The video was posted almost 2 years ago, but the combination of heavy TV rotation, the biggest global sporting event about to begin, and a moving classical music piece have together created a viral perfect storm. And so Ludovico Einaudi, an Italian composer relatively unknown in North American, is now poised for his 15 minutes of fame. Probably not how P&G would have played it out, but having someone steal the spotlight from you means, at the very least, that you’re on the stage.

peter g

WGN Superfans: "How I Met Your Mother"

Traditional Networks are trying to evolve

If you think most networks are unable to adapt to the new reality of the online world, Josh Richman, VP Marketing at WGN America would beg to differ. The network has been actively cultivating their personal group of social influencers. They have identified brand ambassadors (Superfans) based on members who are signed up to their cable channel, and engaged in content on Facebook leveraged around their syndicated programming. These “Superfans” generate content promoting WGN’s line-up and keep engagement levels up, a unique challenge for WGN since they don’t actually create any of their own TV shows. Whether these activities are bearing fruit is hard to say, since I’m guessing they rely on traditional advertising as a primary revenue stream. But it is surprising to see how many viewers are engaged in content WGN has created around their “borrowed” programming… or maybe 1,093, 541 fans just don’t realize they’re not on the official How I Met Your Mother Facebook page?
Did I say there was something to be learned here? I’ve forgotten…

Tomorrow: Social Media chatter and BlueFin Labs

peter g

Post-Advertising Summit

I recently attended the Post Advertising Summit in New York city hosted by Story Worldwide; and as with any conference, you always hope to walk away knowing more than when you traipsed in. I must admit I was a bit disappointed on this front, but I can say that it did expand on a few things I already knew. Here are 5 things I kind of already knew, but found a new spin on…

The notion of authenticity has evolved in the post social media world
Adopting “authenticity” as a cornerstone of your social media strategy has long been a maxim of the online world. The notion that transparency and openness are key to ensuring that consumers trust a brand and are willing to engage in a dialogue, have almost become the hackneyed statements of the marketing community. What’s interesting though, is that this notion of “authenticity” has slowly evolved into an opportunity for content and storytelling. Acknowledging failures and shortcomings (before they’re dredged up by consumers) is the new way to tell stories about how you’re growing as a brand. Or why you’ve decided to change. Humility is in. Check out a few classics:

Domino’s
Chipotle
Patagonia

Tomorrow: What Wharton can teach you about viral videos….

peter g

With the prospect of another slowdown facing the American economy, it’s interesting to remark on the new brand positioning home improvement retailer,Lowe’s, has launched to weather these uncertain times. Rather than jump on the “value and savings” bandwagon, they have opted to strike an emotional cord. “Never stop improving” is the rallying cry that marketing Senior Vice President Tom Lamb, is hoping will resonate with consumers. What’s more, the mantra is both a call to action for consumers as well as a corporate brand promise to deliver innovations to the category. The accompanying TV campaign tugs at the heartstrings as it follows a couple, from innocent youth to their golden age, dancing through the interiors of their ever changing, “improving” home. I’m always a sucker for the emotional card, but I also must admit that it’s refreshing to see a retailer sending out a loftier message these days. The inspirational double-edge slogan, which speaks to the consumer’s mindset as well as the corporate ethos, has a history of success with company’s looking to stand out in the crowd; most notably, Apple’s “Think Different” campaign that challenged the individual as well as championing the company’s philosophy. By combining some cool editing, post effects, and a catchy tune by New Zealander Gin Wigmore, the spot’s optimism is infectious and impossible to resist. It’s true brand building at its emotive best.

peter g

In an effort to revitalize their waning brand, Gap recently launched a series of YouTube videos profiling the creativity of the newly established 1969 denim design studio in downtown Los Angeles. Chief Global Marketing Officer, Seth Farbman, acknowledges that the retailer needed to re-capture the highly influential twenty-something generation. He believes that seeding a viral storytelling campaign is a strategy that will help them connect again. Forming a small, nuclear studio apart from the corporate San Francisco Gap headquarters, was seen as the first step in rebooting the fashion retailer as a cooler, more relevant brand that holds creativity as a key driver of the business. It follows, that documenting this new ethos in a series of online videos, versus the more traditional advertising route, was the best approach in winning over this elusive consumer. Where the strategy falls short however, is at store level. The notion that you can re-invent the brand from a philosophical, production standpoint is only half of the equation – the store experience is the other – and here, Gap is still the same old Gap. The message can be meaningful and can resonate with customers, but if the actual experience doesn’t deliver on the promise, you’ve lost the attempt at demonstrating any authentic desire for change… So in the end, all you have is a corporate wolf in creative sheep’s clothing…

peter g

Gwyneth Paltrow's Reader Survey

The notion of consumer research informing a brand is nothing new. In fact, the hope is always that good research will reveal some untapped need or desire that can lead to a great creative idea or a product innovation that will capture the collective consumer imagination. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that even Gwyneth Paltrow is looking for some brand insight. Her recent diversification from actress and fashion icon, to songstress, culinary guru, and travel expert has left her brand a little stretched. The latest Goop missive contained an extensive reader survey… And my unhealthy Gwyneth fascination aside, it was interesting to see that even the most personal of brands, your own, can sometimes be in need of some necessary retooling. “Does my website need a redesign?” “When am I most interesting: when I’m talking about fashion, travel or food?” And finally, “Who finds me most fascinating: twenty-somethings, thirty-somethings, or dare I ask forty- and fifty-somethings?” If there is an insight to be unearthed here – it may be twofold. Firstly, every brand no matter how small, needs to know what they are selling and to whom. Only then can you craft a message that is meaningful and relevant. And secondly, and perhaps more importantly, all of us need to re-examine more closely the brand and message we project every once and a while. Do we really know how others see us? I’m just saying…

peter g

When I first spotted the poster design for the latest Terrence Malick film, “The Tree of Life”, I was reminded of how powerful the effect can be of doing things differently. Although it may seem like a hackneyed thought in the world of marketing, the simple effect of creating a grid of images to create a movie poster seemed somehow revelatory. What followed for me, was a meandering path of movie poster research too tangential and varied to summarize succinctly, but what became apparent was that in the history of entertainment poster design, little has changed since its inception. From an historical perspective, entertainment poster design really took off in the late  nineteenth century, with the perfection of colour lithography and mass printing, creating an outlet to showcase the talents of such artists as Toulouse-Lautrec with his now iconic posters promoting the Moulin Rouge. Since then, entertainment and movie posters have managed to capitalize on every major art movement and leveraged every graphic design star from Saul Bass to Rex Ray. Yet when you look at the art form as a whole, not surprisingly, it’s those unique posters that deviate from the norm that have had the most impact on our collective imagination. Those that make you think a little more, versus those that attempt to depict a scene, character or visual montage to encapsulate the film. So at the risk of stating the obvious, sometimes breaking the mold can often have a great effect. Yet ironically, it can only work when the established norm is entrenched in our visual lexicon. So the lesson becomes recognizing when these have reached a level of visual universality, so that flipping it on its head will have the most impact.

peter g

The ING Coffee Bar

The latest ING Direct café has opened in downtown Toronto at 221 Yonge Street, and for those of you who are not familiar with the concept, the bank is hoping you’ll stop in for a cup of coffee, some free WiFi, and maybe discuss the benefits of a fixed or variable mortgage. It’s part of a growing global trend that UK think-tank The Future Laboratory has termed “bleisure” – the mixing of business and leisure. Although this premise may seem like a union of church and state, the ubiquity of electronic devices has done much to blur the boundaries between these two opposing worlds. American Express and Starwood Hotels & Resorts recently launched a joint credit card geared specifically at this phenomenon – targeting travelers looking for ways to maximize their points and build leisure time into their business travel. This mashup moniker is also finding its way into the fashion industry, with menswear shows increasingly being dubbed as “bleisure” collections – as they straddle a happy medium between work and casual style.  Even the seemingly innocuous act of linking your Facebook page to your LinkedIn account signals to all that you’re comfortable blending your work and personal lives. So although this trend may seem like a passing fad – I suspect we’ll see more mashups of what we have traditionally defined as separate pursuits. Latte with your GIC anyone?

peter g