#CustomStudio.-The art of managing a global brand across multiple countries.

Pepe Jeans

Pepe Jeans London is renowned for its commitment to the fusion of styles and cultures— values that it has upheld since in 1973. As a global brand, it’s a challenge to maintain and adapt its identity and tone in all the markets where it’s active. They needed a new joint strategy to help strengthen their image (and in doing so, their presence) mainly in Spain, Italy, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Mexico, but also in other countries. And, that is where we came in.

Three Pillars: Creativity, Technology and Innovation

The “what” was clear, now we needed to solve the “how”. We took an extensive look at how the brand had executed its global strategy so far, and we found the answer.

We had to turn Pepe Jeans into more than just a brand: an aspirational fashion community for young people who share a trend-setting style. We had to unify, dynamise and personalise the followers’ experience through actions that would strengthen the link with the community, to bring them closer and make them interact with the brand in an organic way.

To do this, we would need to strengthen their digital assets and then adapt to the target audiences in each country.

Our strategy strengthened and transformed Pepe Jeans’ digital assets in terms of their visual identity and message impact.

Data, Data, Data

In order to determine which was the ideal channel for our communication strategy, and understand Pepe Jeans’ share of voice (values and concepts associated with the brand, user perception, positioning against the competition, etc) and target audience in each country, we carried out a very detailed data analysis.

Thanks to this analysis, we discovered that, of all the digital media among which we would spread and promote the campaign (website and social media), Instagram was the most important channel for our objectives. It had a greater aspirational impact, and would act as the main loudspeaker for the company’s philosophy and spirit. In addition, it allowed for more interaction with followers and also gave them part of the limelight.

With regard to Pepe Jeans’ share of voice, we established a twofold objective: to consolidate the brand’s presence in the markets where it was most clearly identified with the product (“denim”, “jeans”), and to work on Pepe’s values and culture, emphasising the spirit of the brand (associated with concepts such as “Cosmopolitan”, “Music”, “Street Life”) in the targeted territories and countries to be won over.

We closed the circle by further defining the audiences, in order to identify the type of people to whom the message would be addressed.

Our international creative and content teams worked on adapting the message to each local market, enhancing the relevance and quality of the message by adjusting the context and the timing of the broadcast.

A New Identity
Firmly grounded in the information we had gained from our data analysis, we developed the underpinnings of the new brand identity that Pepe Jeans would use in its global marketing strategy:

  • Urban Energy: Pepe Jeans captures the spirit that comes from the energy of the city and channels it into a style of its own.
  • Back to the Origins: Back to Pepe’s birthplace in London’s Portobello district, to the culture of street markets and the fusion with British pop music.
  • Values: We developed a tone of voice based on freedom, diversity and going back to our roots.

With our new data driven strategy, we began work to on expanding the identity we had developed.

Breaking Down the Online/Offline Barriers

Yet, digital strategy was only one (important, but not the only) part of the challenge we had to overcome. The other was to increase traffic to Pepe Jeans’ network of European shops.

We had to find a way to encourage Pepe Jeans fans to move from online to in-store. We knew that only bold creative work could achieve such an ambitious goal. And so, #CustomStudio was born; a campaign that merged digital and physical actions.

We took the process of personalising a garment from Instagram Stories to Pepe Jeans shops in different European cities. Instagram Stories was the perfect platform to express the street life and cosmopolitan spirit of the brand, allowing us a great interaction with followers.

We launched two of our most iconic garments (denim jacket and denim jeans) in Stories format and more than 15 stickers to personalise them. All our followers had to do was take a screenshot of the images of our garments and start creating. At the end, the brand chose the winners, who were able to make their design a reality for free and see the process of creating the garment in real time.

We also organised events in Pepe Jeans shops in Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam, London, Paris and Barcelona, where renowned artists brought #CustomStudio designs to life.

A stronger brand identity, higher quality content, better positioning and more awareness, campaigns aligned with the company’s strategies and objectives and fewer online/offline barriers. This is how we solved the challenge of designing and implementing a global brand identity strategy

 

#CustomStudio: From a challenge to a success

It was a challenge, both technologically and creatively speaking, as they translated Stories content into physical garments in real time, but it was a resounding success.

We increased interactions from digital channels: more than 174,000 users were impacted in the first 48 hours and the gifts and stickers that were developed for the action reached 4.4 million views. And, of course, we also achieved our objective in physical shops, where visits multiplied from the start of the campaign. In addition, the originality of #CustomStudio was rewarded with a Sol de Plata award in 2019.

This creative and data-driven strategy allowed us to find the insights needed to adapt to each region or country according to its specific needs and, at the same time, to develop the global tone that a brand like Pepe Jeans must maintain.

Let's talk