ADDRESS_THE_FUTURE

TitleADDRESS_THE_FUTURE
BrandCARLINGS
Product/ServiceTHE DIGITAL CLOTHING COLLECTION
Category C08. Market Disruption
Entrant VIRTUE Copenhagen, DENMARK
Idea Creation VIRTUE Copenhagen, DENMARK
Production VIRTUE Copenhagen, DENMARK
Post Production VIRTUE Copenhagen, DENMARK
Credits
Name Company Position
Morten Grubak VIRTUE Executive Creative Director
Joachim Ulrich VIRTUE Copywriter
Tao Thomsen VIRTUE Copywriter
Emil Kjems VIRTUE Art Director
Dimitri Werner de Paiva VIRTUE Art Director
Berglind Stefánsdóttir Virtue Project Director
Asbjørn Munk Virtue Producer
Kirstine Kollerup Virtue Post Production
Sahand Porkar Virtue creative technologist
Max Siegal Virtue Editor
Emil Fogh Virtue Cameraman
Monika Prokop Virtue Strategist
Rob Newlan Virtue CEO

Objectives

Carlings had decades of retail credentials, but only entered e-commerce in 2018. The objective of the task was to gain sudden and significant AWARENESS about their online presence and drive ENGAGEMENT on social channels to move their webshop it into the CONSIDERATION set for online shoppers. Carlings also wanted to change CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR around online shopping, knowing that the tendency to return online clothing could hamper their operational costs. Short-term sales and profit were explicitly NOT part of the objectives.

Summary of the work

BACKGROUND: STANDING OUT IN A SEA OF E-COMMERCE After selling clothes in over 200 brick-and-mortar stores for decades, Scandinavian fashion retailer Carlings wanted to open their very first webshop in 2018. So they asked us how they could make the world notice them in a sea of e-commerce. But what do you say when you are 10 years late to the conversation? CREATIVE CHALLENGE: FROM A DECADE TOO LATE — TO A DECADE AHEAD. We flipped this tension around, asking instead how a webshop could look ten years from now. And it quickly became clear that fashion couldn’t keep on as it has until now. Every year, 150 billion pieces of clothing are thrown in landfills. And the average garment is only worn 7 times before it ends up in the trash. This is driven in part by the pressure to never wear an outfit more than once on social media. So how could we let fashionistas share new looks on social media without wasting resources? SOLUTION: DIGITALLY TAILORED CLOTHING WITHOUT ECO-IMPACT We created the world’s first digital clothing collection with zero negative impact on the environment. The clothing is created as multi-layered 3D blueprints. Just like physical tailoring, each piece has a pattern with seams, notches, and fabric properties like drape and sheen. EXECUTION: CUSTOM COUTURE; MADE FOR THE GRAM When customers order an item from the collection, a digital tailor fits the design to a 3D figure of the customer's body. Then, they insert the model in an image of the customers choosing to post online or print out.

Engagement & Awareness

AdDRESS THE FUTURE was featured in 800+ publications including BBC, Vogue, Elle, HighSnobiety, Hypebeast, Dazed, i-D, Bloomberg & Forbes for an estimated PR value of 94MM SEK and a total reach in excess of 1 billion people. With +3.500 shares and over 170.000 social reactions to the story across the outlets that shared it, we gained immense impressions — without spending anything on media placement.

Social Behaviour & Insight

SOCIAL MEDIA MADE US SHOP SO MUCH ONLY DIGITAL OUTFITS CAN SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT Every year, 150 billion pieces of clothing are thrown in landfills. And the average garment is only worn 7 times before it ends up in the trash. This is driven in part by the pressure to never wear an outfit more than once on social media. Research from Barclaycard shows that ‘outfit of the day’ posts have literally become just that. Almost two in ten Brits reveal that they have bought clothes online (17%) to wear once with the aim of posting a photo to social media and subsequently returning their purchases. The hashtag #ootd (Outfit Of The Day) alone has 280 MM posts on Instagram.

Brand Affinity & Sentiment

Reactions were overwhelmingly positive at 90%+, and recall of the campaign reflected very positively on the brand, which is consistently mentioned as a first mover in the digital fashion space by renowned publications like BBC, Forbes, Vogue, and Elle.

Sales Success

The digital collection sold out in just 14 days (as one of very few digital clothing collections to have done so subsequently). It also increased site traffic by a whopping 57% — organically. Carlings even rose to the top of Google Search rankings, beating international juggernaut brewery Carling, without spending a single dollar on Adwords. All profits were donated to WaterAid to counteract the traditional fashion industry's problematic water usage.

Conclusion

The campaign didn't just dust off the brand's image and put them at the absolute forefront of fashion innovation, it made a serious impact on popular culture and changed the fashion industry for good. As the first fully digital collection, it ushered the idea of non-physical fashion from fringe phenomena into the cultural mainstream. Since we launched, Google search results for "digital fashion" has more than tripled from under a billion to over 3 billion. Giant fashion brands like Gucci, Balenciaga, Tommy Hilfiger, and Nike has since entered the space, launching their own digital collections. But nonetheless, a comparatively tiny retailer from Scandinavia consistently tops the list of first movers and innovators in the field when the story of fashion's digital transformation is told by respected industry voices such as Vogue, Elle, Hypebeast and Highsnobiety.

Discounting Factors

The campaign was created on a budget of just 500.000 Euros and didn't spend a single cent on media placement.