As Dickies’ global creative agency and strategic partner, we were asked to create a range of brand-defining strategy pieces to bring consistency to Dickies’ creative direction and execution.

Working alongside the global brand team, we created three distinct strategies, which were deeply grounded in insight but comprehensible to a wide array of stakeholders. A global creative strategy was designed to streamline all visual aspects of the brand; A global social strategy was designed to ensure clear direction for all things digital. And the global community strategy was designed to inform the brand’s approach to influencer, talent and grassroots partnerships – making sure the whole world celebrated Dickies in a way that was effective and authentic.


Dickies

Dickies Global Strategy Case Study | This Here

Brand Strategy

Creative Direction

Brand Community, Strategy and Execution

Global Strategy

Even at the world’s most locked down, getting outdoors was never cancelled. JD were looking for a way to encourage the JD consumer to get outside and enjoy what nature has to offer. We were challenged to position The North Face as an outdoor leader within the JD consumer group and start to make the “outside” accessible to all, whilst driving conversion and consumer engagement.

After identifying the right relatable and recognisable faces to lead our campaign, we took the five of them on a journey of exploration in the outdoors. Each of them shared personal insights on how to engage with nature, and how they take their own inspiration from it. We created a branded teaser to kick off the project, in line with TNF’s global brand content, and followed up with individual stories that linked to swipe-ups, to drive conversion. We created a unique “Never Stop” AR Filter to drive engagement, and worked with a selection of supporting talent to make the message of outdoor appeal radiate even further.

JD Sports X TNF

JD Sports X The North Face Never Stop Case Study | This Here

Content Production

Influencer Marketing

Digital-first Activations

Never Stop

Dickies has been a much-loved pioneer of American workwear for more than a century. Five Dickies designs have earned true icon status – worn across the globe and adopted by all kinds of tribes as their own. Dickies asked This Here to create a shoot that would immortalise these iconic garments, capturing their unique spirit in evergreen content.

Our creative direction needed to showcase the universal appeal of these five products. We set out to communicate that the icons are made for all of us – no matter who you are, where you come from or how you style them. So for our inspiration and our setting, we went back to the one place we all started out: school. And we invited real makers – from manual labourers such as 

 – aged eighteen to eighty, to join us there.

Back to School with Dickies Case Study | This Here

Back to School with Dickies

In 1966, the identity of The North Face was carved out when an oddball crowd gathered at the opening of The North Face Store in San Francisco. It was a meeting of adventurous minds, and a poke in the eye for the mainstream.

More than 50 years later, The Pinnacle Project was created to pay homage to that historic night, bringing to the spotlight a limited edition Nuptse - an iconic, adventure-proof jacket customised with reflective duct tape.

We decided to track down the unruly spirits of the digital space and bring them together.

Having recruited a diverse set of protagonists who embodied the pinnacle attitude, the team members were captured in their hometowns of Berlin and Manchester, giving us footage that drove awareness of the campaign, hype for the Live events in Berlin, Manchester, and in the Italian Dolomites, and huge demand for the Nuptse jacket collection – nicely timed, just as winter took hold.


The North Face

The North Face Pinnacle Project | This Here

Pinnacle Project

With the launch of their SS20 Black Series collection, The North Face wanted to cement their place at the junction of performance wear and culture by holding a unique one-night event at Paris Fashion Week.

We were briefed to recruit the talent to perform at the event – a core component of the experience. It was the element that would make or break their launch, and needed to be curated with creativity.

As the Black Series collection explores the cross-boundaries between haute couture and technical sportswear, we knew our performers needed to embody the same level of innovation and creativity.

 headlined after epic opening sets from local Parisian artist 

 whose naturalistic sounds merged seamlessly with the aesthetic of the event set design.

“a special performance from Brooklyn-based DJ and producer Yaeji brought the crowd – as well as the vision for Black Series – to life.”

The North Face Black Series Launch at Paris Fashion Week Case Study | This Here

Talent Strategy

Experiential Production

Black Series Launch at PFW

Vectiv (the new range of trail running shoes from The North Face) is designed to be inclusive and broad in its appeal. Under the Vectiv umbrella, raw perseverance and passion for the great outdoors unites people with wildly different techniques, routines, and cultures. We were asked to celebrate runners, hikers and nature-lovers from around the world, by highlighting the diversity of the outdoors. Our task was to tell this story through the lens of real people.

We found five outdoor lovers from five different US states, and teamed each of them up with photographers who would help document their story out on the trail. We briefed them with The North Face’s creative guidelines and then enlisted them to capture three distinctive moments, each reflecting a different way to be present in the outdoors.
Each co-creator shared these moments with their followers in a combination of feed and story posts, to inspire others to put on their trail shoes for the first time...and follow in their footsteps.


The North Face USA Vectiv Launch Case Study | This Here

USA Vectiv Launch

The North Face had launched a brand campaign, ‘Reset Your Normal’, but were struggling to translate this for a JD audience. This Here were tasked to form a creative content approach, to tell the story of what it means to “reset” following a global pandemic, with the goal of driving sign ups to JD’s consumer membership platform JDX.

We worked with a carefully curated roster of high profile talent, to share their lockdown experiences through honest and relatable content. The campaign ran across 4 key markets - UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands and was fronted by the likes of JAY1, Mahalia, Joelah Noble, Aylo and Le Motif. We shot them in their homes, and got each of them talking in a candid, personal way about the trials of lockdown. It was important to land an ultimately positive message – which we did by focusing on the ways they’d all found to ‘reset’ their attitude during this time, and come out of it having grown in ways they hadn’t expected.

Whether it was just getting outside, live streaming from a living room or finding new ways to get inspired – each talent gave consumers ways to enact positive change in their own lives, and to take agency over their wellbeing at a time when a lot of us were feeling quite helpless.

To help them along, we offered a range of exclusive digital experiences via the JDX platform, from online dance classes, to shopping experiences, tickets and online gigs.


JD Sports X The North Face Reset Case Study | This Here

Reset

We were asked to find artists that could reinterpret Etnia’s products and unique spirit by reimagining their natural habitat: the internet.

We teamed up with a global team of diverse and unpredictable creators including Carolina Spencer (

). We challenged them to portray Etnia’s colourful and diverse range of glasses with Etnia’s unique “Anartistic” spirit - reimagining a traditional product shot into surprising and irreverent new forms.
Surreal and unpredictable, these artistic collaborations reached a new, curious audience – positioning Etnia as a bold, creative brand. The project received an impressive cache of earned coverage in titles from Elle to Huffington Post, and the campaign was extended into an engaging always-on campaign.


Etnia

The Etnia Collective Case Study | This Here

The Etnia Collective

The North Face’s heritage ON and OFF the Mountain has always polarised its creative output into two different narratives – each with their own categories of influencers and partnership owners. We were tasked with finding a new way: a united approach that would span the brand’s philosophical, communicational, and operational output and give The North Face one true North for all contexts.

We understood that while the two worlds of On and Off Mountain differ, they’re united by the spirit of exploration. We set about building the world’s largest team of explorers; a team that embodied the brand purpose and soul of The North Face, and was diverse enough to bring every walk of North Face life together, with sustainability at their core.

The team consists of 52 explorers from across Europe, each with different story to tell across a huge array of disciplines, from trail runners to rappers, and climbers to artists. The team are active; representing The North Face on every product drop and brand campaign, creating unique content, setting challenges, showcasing the product and attending events.

The North Face Explorer Team Influencer Programme Case Study | This Here

Product Seeding

Partnerships

Explorer Team

To celebrate one hundred years of Dickies, we were asked to create a campaign that paid homage to the brand's past, whilst simultaneously celebrating the future they’re trying to build. We pitched the idea of making a TV Documentary instead of an advertising campaign, providing us a platform to tell the story with the beauty and grace it deserved.

Made To Last - a feature length TV documentary, explores American grit and resilience through the eyes of an an all-American rancher, a Chicana mechanic and a DIY skate park. The film explores what it takes to create a legacy and make it last for generations to come.

Streaming around the world on Vice TV, we created a piece of branded entertainment with a powerful message. One of unity, hope and humility.

Dickies 'Made to Last' Documentary

Dickies 'Made to Last'

The North Face wanted to launch the Vectiv shoe range by celebrating runners, hikers and nature lovers in a way that ensured inclusivity is visibly narrated throughout.

Partnering up with real people who would help the brand highlight the diversity and universality within an outdoor lover’s mindsets, they pushed the message that although their techniques, routines and culture may differ, what binds them together is raw perseverance and a passion for the outdoors.

We asked the influencers to team up with a photographer and capture 3 “moments” to be shared to their followers in a combination of instagram infeed and story posts. Each moment was to result in 15 high res photographs, reflecting a different way the influencers loved to be outdoors, following these suggested topics of focus as a guide:
Place: A favourite trail they love to hike/run.
People: A club or group of friends they love to hike/run with.
Time of day: A sunset or night hike/run.

Likes: 51.6k Reach 9.9M Engagement: 52.3k Engagement rate: 5.10%

The North Face Vectiv Launch

To promote PUMA’s newest shoe, the PUMA Mayu, we created a mini-video content series called “Get Real with Me” that would appeal to the size? consumer.

Anouska and Kadimah aka NUKA Nails hosted this series in their nail studio whereby London based fashion creatives came into their nail studio to get their nails done, matching the colourway of their PUMA Mayu shoe. Whilst they are getting their nails done, Anouska and Kadimah had some light-hearted ‘girl talk’ with them, covering topics such as:- their interests, challenges, their journey getting them to where they are now, fashion favourites (dos and don'ts, must haves) and what's next in their careers etc.

The video content series came in the format of an instagram reel which was accompanied by a GIF and imagery of the influencers in the different MAYU colourways.

Dickies

Global Strategy

Work

Dickies

The Brief

The Project

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