L.L.Bean
L.L.Bean - famous for their cold-weather shoes and parkas - sees sales dip every summer as they lose their clear niche. After all, what “outside wear” do the 80% of Americans who live in urban areas need during the summertime?
Enter our disruptive "Be An Outsider in the City" campaign. Rather than focusing on the traditionally “outdoorsy” types, we zoomed out to focus on urban inclusivity.
OUT OF HOME
While the L.L.Bean catalog is full of scenic vistas and rustic landscapes, the majority of Americans’ day-to-day reality is more concrete jungle than canopied forest. So we met them where they are.
Large-scale projection animations along pedestrian nightlife areas in Boston, Chicago and New York showed how fresh air affected them as they enjoyed their evening walks.
Each piece of media congratulated our audience on what they were doing in that very moment, balancing quippy headlines with evidence-based factoids, educating the public on the ways simple outdoor tasks improve health and happiness.
Wild postings in Boston and Chicago along popular sidewalks for pedestrian commuters, shoppers, and sight-seers. Benches beckoned coffee shop goers to “have a shot of sunlight with their coffee” for improved energy.
Throughout the campaign, L.L.Bean did not push any single line or product. Instead, we uplifted the sort of behavior that improves mental and physical health, building good will and creating a new strategic focus.
And while we celebrated city-dwellers’ every step, we ourselves left no footprint. These guerilla techniques were incredibly low waste, as exemplified here by “clean graffiti” made with only pressurized water.
ORGANIC SOCIAL
Our goal for the social feed was to create stark contrast to what is expected of L.L.Bean, and highlight the ease of getting outside rather than the remote hard to reach landscapes that are typically featured in the outdoor category.
We paired people enjoying the outside right in the city with lines encouraging them to use the city as they would a park or even a forest.
