» » Advertising: ‘Live in Levi’s’ Campaign Reunites Levi Strauss With Its Old Agency, FCB

Advertising: ‘Live in Levi’s’ Campaign Reunites Levi Strauss With Its Old Agency, FCB

Posted by Unknown on Sunday, June 29, 2014

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Media |‘Live in Levi’s’ Campaign Reunites Levi Strauss With Its Old Agency, FCB



http://nyti.ms/1r2Igmz



The ads aim to show that “Levi’s are for everybody,” said Jennifer Sey, chief marketing officer.






Advertising


By STUART ELLIOTT







WHEN the duo Peaches and Herb, known as “the sweethearts of soul,” got back together, they sang, “Reunited and it feels so good.” Now, an apparel brand reuniting after 16 years with an agency that was its soul mate for almost seven decades is declaring that its clothing feels good enough to live in.


The brand is the flagship Levi’s line of jeans, tops, jackets and other products sold by Levi Strauss & Company of San Francisco. A worldwide campaign that is about to begin includes commercials, on television and in movie theaters; print, online and mobile ads; billboards and other ads for out-of-home media; ads in stores and store windows; and a presence in social media like Facebook and Twitter.



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The campaign carries the theme “Live in Levi’s,” replacing “Go forth,” which had run for the last five years. The “Live in Levi’s” campaign is being produced through a collaboration among an internal team at Levi Strauss; the House Worldwide, an agency in London that was acquired this month by Crispin Porter & Bogusky, a division of MDC Partners; and FCB, whose San Francisco office, with predecessor agencies, created campaigns for Levi’s from 1930 through early 1998.


Since then, the Levi’s brand has changed agencies several times, moving from the former Foote, Cone & Belding to agencies that included TBWA/Chiat/Day, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Wieden & Kennedy. FCB and the House Worldwide were named in February to handle global marketing for Levi’s after the brand spent five years at Wieden & Kennedy, which created the “Go forth” ads.


The reunion with FCB, owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies, occurred a few months after a reunion at Levi Strauss when Jennifer Sey, who worked on the Levi’s brand from 2003 to 2008, became its chief marketing officer after handling corporate tasks. “When I rejoined Levi’s in the fall, I looked at what we felt good about and what we wanted to improve on,” Ms. Sey said in an interview in Midtown Manhattan.


One conclusion was that “we wanted to get a greater product focus” in the advertising to “assert leadership” in the crowded, fragmented category of jeans and other denim apparel, she said.


The goal was to feature products in a nontraditional manner that would be inspired by “the personal stories we get from our passionate fan base about the things they do in their Levi’s,” she added, “the road trips they took, the pair they wore for 20 years” and other instances of “authentic self-expression.”


Other conclusions were that ads should “reflect a very optimistic attitude” among consumers, Ms. Sey said, and convey that “Levi’s are for everybody,” rather than an elite.


“When we’ve been at our best,” she added, citing as an example the “501 blues” campaign that Foote, Cone & Belding introduced in 1984, “the brand has been at the center of culture, not right on the edge.”


“We had a great run with Wieden,” said Ms. Sey, who was among the executives who decided to hire the agency. “We just mutually agreed it was sort of time to part ways; it was entirely amicable.”



Eric Springer, chief creative officer of the FCB West unit of FCB, which is working on the Levi’s campaign from its offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, called the “Go forth” campaign successful in its ability to “capture the essence of the blue-collar worker mentality” at the roots of the brand.


“But it got a little too hipster, a little too artsy,” Mr. Springer said, and “the voice needed to be tweaked” to “open the brand back up to everybody.”


“If you want to be big and popular, you’ve got to go from playing the coffeehouse to playing Madison Square Garden,” he added. “Don’t be so exclusive; be inclusive.”


That is particularly important for a brand like Levi’s, Mr. Springer said, because “the first buyer” of its products is “the buyer at J. C. Penney, Macy’s, Dillard’s, who buys 50,000 pairs before the consumer buys one.”


As a result, the ads for the “Live in Levi’s” campaign feature actors and models who seem more mainstream, though not the wholesome types or professional athletes in ads for denim brands like Wrangler. The casts are high-spirited and sometimes quirky, such as a man in soaked Levi’s pants who boards a bus, takes them off and hangs them out a window to dry. But the intent is not to be out there or off-putting; for instance, the man keeps on his underwear.


Some ads embrace inclusiveness by telling consumers they can do what they want with their Levi’s garments: “wash them” or “don’t wash them,” “rock them” or “roll them,” “unbutton them” or “button them.” That is embodied by an ad for 501 jeans that declares: “The 501. Started by us. Finished by you.”


The campaign will include ads for some of the “more contemporary” Levi’s products, Ms. Sey said, like the 511 line of slim jeans for men. Those ads call the 511 “a classic since right now.”


Levi Strauss plans “a modest increase in dollars” devoted to advertising the Levi’s brand, she added, and hopes for “significant increases in reach” by optimizing the brand’s media planning. OMD, part of the Omnicom Media Group, is the worldwide planning agency for Levi’s.


According to Kantar Media, a unit of WPP, Levi Strauss spent $26.7 million last year on ads in major media in the United States, compared with $40 million in 2012, $42.6 million in 2011, $71.5 million in 2010 and $61.5 million in 2009.



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