COME TOGETHER

Short List
TitleCOME TOGETHER
BrandH&M
Product/ServiceH&M
Category A02. TV & VOD: Fiction & Non-Fiction
Entrant adam&eveDDB London, UNITED KINGDOM
Idea Creation adam&eveDDB London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production RIFF RAFF London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production 2 FINAL CUT London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production 3 THE MILL London, UNITED KINGDOM
Production 4 FACTORY London, UNITED KINGDOM
Credits
Name Company Position
Ben Priest adam&eveDDB Group Chief Creative Officer
Ben Tollett adam&eveDDB Group Executive Creative Director
Richard Brim adam&eveDDB Chief Creative Officer
Erik Zetterberg H&M Global Head of Creative
Daniel Hartmann H&M Head of Marketing
Lars Nilsson H&M Producer
Boshra Sadegiana H&M Project Manager
Till Diestel adam&eveDDB Creative
Tim Vance adam&eveDDB Creative
Paul Knott adam&eveDDB Creative
Tammy Einav adam&eveDDB Joint CEO
James Rowe adam&eveDDB Business Director
Lucie Georgeson adam&eveDDB Agency Producer
Olivia Chittenden adam&eveDDB Account Director
Lisa Margulis The Directors Bureau & Riff Raff Executive Producer
Matthew Fone The Directors Bureau & Riff Raff Executive Producer
Julie Sawyer The Directors Bureau & Riff Raff Producer
Wes Anderson n/a Director
Bruno Delbonnel The Directors Bureau & Riff Raff DOP
Joe Guest Final Cut Editor
Gemma Humphries The Mill Post Producer
Jonathan Westley The Mill VFX Supervisor
Anthony Moore Factory Sound Designer

The Campaign

Our key campaign message ‘Come Together’ was born out of a desire to create an easily understandable global message that spoke simultaneously to the current global socio-political climate, but also to a simpler message, that the holidays are a time to come together with loved ones to celebrate and be positive. Central to the execution of this idea was a 4-minute, Wes Anderson directed film, bringing to life the story of strangers coming together on a delayed train, destined to take them home for the holidays. We witness the collective spirit of the passengers and conductor as they come together to create a make-shift Christmas on-board the train. This central piece of long-format would be teased through traditional media, but would exist online for viewers to watch and share.

Creative Execution

To bring this message to life in a way that was utterly stylish, would cut-through the holiday clutter, and communicate ‘Come Together’ in a warm, inviting and seasonal way, we enlisted Academy-Award nominated director Wes Anderson, to execute the campaign with his signature style. This decision was critical to communicating our story in a way that would elevate our simple message and story – the coming together of strangers in an unfortunate situation – in a visually compelling way, that connected emotionally with our audience. Adding iconic John Lennon track “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” further contributed to our commitment to delivering a positive, yet meaningful message. The campaign was focused around a hero launch moment, across 65 markets, simultaneously activating the campaign, to generate global conversation around the film. Launch was focused around social platforms: YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to facilitate reaction, conversation and sharing of the film.

The ‘Come Together’ campaign was hugely successful. The hero four-minute film reached over 860M people online, and received over 19M YouTube views (+220% YoY). Additionally, the campaign SoV increased 9% YoY, capturing the largest share of the market for H&M to date. Our hero video post reached 62.6M viewers (+95.8%) across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #ComeTogether trended worldwide on release, and fuelled conversation around the topic throughout the campaign. It contributed to a 6% YoY growth across the H&M group. The film was picked up by global news corporations, Sky News, WSJ, The Independent and Entertainment Weekly. In terms of sales effect, whilst we cannot release specific figures, the campaign contributed to a 6% YoY growth across the H&M group. At a difficult time for the global population, H&M has shown that a simple, powerful message, executed with style, delivered across appropriate media channels, can really help people Come Together.

This year H&M wanted to break-through the stereotypes of the fashion category – which has previously focused on pop-princesses and elegant, aloof, short-form TVCs selling a vision of luxury and glamour. So instead of a :60 pop-promo or :30 catwalk, we wanted to create a piece of appointment-to-view entertainment content, something that immersed the viewer in a story, a story that had meaning beyond the category or time of year. To do this, we executed a simple story – the coming together of different, diverse characters for a greater good.

Our target audience were global, trend-setting females aged 18-34, a group that are traditionally hard to reach using just traditional above-the-line media. Indeed, we knew that this group were leading the increases in online video consumption which had grown by 23% YoY in 2015 (http://www.zenithoptimedia.com/mobile-drive-19-8-increase-online-video-consumption-2016/). So instead of continuing what had gone before (30” TVC, print based media, short form online video) we wanted to create long-form content that would entertain our consumers – creating something that they genuinely wanted to watch. Central to this was a clear message executed with a PR-able hook. Securing Wes Anderson as director allowed us to not only create content that was stylish, entertaining, charming and unexpected, but it gave us an additional element that we could use to attract our viewers to the content.