Converse
Year
2018
Services
- Crossover Marketing
- IP Marketing
- PR & Event Management
Deliverables
- Customer engagement
- Consumer awareness
- Crossover campaigns
Meet Converse
Converse is an American shoe company that primarily produces skating shoes and lifestyle brand footwear and apparel. Founded in 1908, it has been a subsidiary of Nike, Inc. since 2003. During World War II, the company shifted its manufacturing from the public, and instead made footwear for the military.
Objectives
Converse wanted to engage customers at their first major brand launch in China and increase share of voice on social media for more brand awareness amongst the younger generation of consumers in China.
IMS Solution
IMS helped inject youth, art, and energy into the classic Western sports shoe brand by selecting an innovative Chinese crossover partner for the brand’s star product: the Chuck Taylor Allstars. By selecting a top designer in China who had a fervent local following and fashionable influence over Generation Z consumers, IMS positioned Converse for a ready Chinese market and emphasised values important both to the brand and to its targeted consumers.
By injecting an artful and philosophical meaning into the campaign name and directing the collaboration’s concept of “Half”, IMS helped Converse and Feng Chen Wang create true innovation. We demonstrated this concept to consumers by designing an exhibition space that played on the concept and perspective of “half” with regards to the clothes and shoes. We exhibited the contents of the Chinese designer Wang’s lived-in design studio to demonstrate the “half”, transient status of public vs. private, and an ever-disappearing boundary between the two spheres, thereby highlighting an ethos of comfort that defied cultural boundaries. We developed brand content that emphasised the lived-in status and comfort-centric purpose of Converse products to allow Chinese consumers to experience first-hand the high level of comfort for which the Converse brand was known.
Results
The IMS-directed fashion launch, exhibition and catwalk show event was a groundbreaking success and created hype and social media following in China for the Western brand. Most importantly, we helped Converse secure a strategic entry to a key new market.
