The Campaign

Ten years of playing second fiddle to denim’s legendary brand in China created just the hunger that Lee Jeans needed to fuel its provocative Night Skins range and decisively close the gap. Ripe with opportunity, the launch of its most provocative collection ever was clearly our moment. The first bold decision was to walk away from the youth market, acknowledging that this was a Levi’s stronghold where we just could not win. Now free to focus on China’s 20 and 30-somethings, research uncovered our cultural insight that this group has a ‘night side’ but in China people just don’t talk about it. Lee took the bold step of confronting this social taboo head-on, unleashing the ‘Night Side’ campaign with provocative content, KOL ambush and masses of online social interaction. Night Side broke the silence and turned this once no-go zone into an ownable territory for Lee Jeans. Sometimes being socially inappropriate really pays off! Lee Jeans was able to emerge from the dark shadows of the China market, shake its ‘functional’ positioning and build a cutting edge identity through this campaign. The Night Skins range sold out and Lee sales drew even with Levi’s for the first time in 10 years. The cut-through of Night Side was so great that despite Levi’s outspending us 300%, our sales efficiency was nearly 3 times that of Levi’s. Lee Jeans proved that sometimes you’ve got to loosen up and unleash provocative taboos to build brand fans in China.

The Brief

1. Same premium price, different target audience: Lee made the bold decision to concede part of the market to Levi’s – the under-20s bracket – and focus on attracting the mature and sophisticated aged 20+ sector; fashion conscious, professionals with disposable income. 2. More experiential, more social: Lee set out to become the brand that understands and inspires its target audience’s curiosity, desires and sophistication for self-expression through social media. 3. Transform the Night Skins line-up from a “product” to a “brand experience”: Utilize the boldness of the Night Skins product to trigger its target audience into an honest and engaging communication.

Results

1) Strong business results: • Night Skins range sold out • Sales volume 2.7x higher than Levi’s • Despite the downturn trend in the industry, Lee’s market share remained at 9% from 2011 to 2012 while Levi’s decreased by -2%. 2) Brand equity: • Brand equity rose by +12%. • Brand attributes for being popular, confident and innovative increased by +18.6% against Levi’s who declined by -2%. 3) This was fueled by impressive media coverage: • 500,000+ people engaged with Lee branded content (highest ever for Lee) • 3.2 million views of brand videos (50% more than previously achieved) • 50,000+ new Lee fans across RenRen, Weibo and Douban (up from zero prior to the campaign) • 142,000 blogs discussed the campaign • ROI on media spend was 3x that of Levi’s. For every 1 USD that Lee spent on media, 44.8 pairs of jeans were sold. • US$2million media earned

Execution

A. Provocative Content: 8 week nationwide advertising campaign using postcard-style print ads with provoking headlines that represented different Night Sides. B. Lead by Example: Lee used “Night Side” comments made by celebrity, Eddie Peng to kick off the conversation in ads and social media, attracting 30,000 questions in one hour during an online Q&A. C. KOL Ambush: 30 of China’s most influential KOLs were invited to what they believed was a Lee fashion event. However, to their surprise, this was an ambush. Each received a Night Skins make-over and had to take part in a series of psychological experiments. With a supporting cast of 100 actors, the KOLs experienced a unique journey to explore their deep emotions from fear to lust to laughter as their Night Sides were exposed. The whole process was recorded and 30 videos were posted online with links to Lee’s e-commerce site.

The Situation

Having employed continuous, large scale TV campaigns, Levi’s was already well-established as the iconic brand for the jeans market in China. On the contrary, Lee was a brand built on promoting its operational efficiency, a character determined by VF Corporation, its owner company. Consequently, Lee was left sat behind Levi’s in the competitive China market and lacked the ‘cool’ credentials. It needed a much stronger brand presence coupled with an engaging value to stand any chance of competing with Levi’s, and this had to be achieved with just a third of Levi’s’ budget.

The Strategy

The Idea: “Free Your Nightside” A hypothesis was developed based on Depth Psychology by Carl Jung and the term “the shadow side”. This term suggests that everyone has a dominant personality that is also accompanied by a dark side; something that Chinese culture in particular had traditionally been mute about. A qualitative research program revealed that “the shadow side” of Chinese adults was often repressed by family, work and social pressures. This insight was then developed into the idea“Free Your Night Side.” The strategy was to transform the “Night Skins” product line into a brand that addressed the repressed feelings of its target audience, thereby triggering a deeper, thought-provoking conversation about personal expression in China.