Dating a dummy

DESCRIPTION

Van Gils was a successful formal menswear brand across Europe in the eighties. In its prime it rivaled Hugo Boss, but had fallen into decline and had become largely unknown. Van Gils wanted to rebuild the brand’s visibility among 28-40 year old men in four local markets: Sweden, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands.

While other fashion brands use celebrities as models to add borrowed interest to the products, Van Gils understood that it is really only the suit that counts. The campaign consisted of magazine spreads featuring an anonymous mannequin who “gets a life” and lives out a celebrity life. The strategy was to take the mannequin (an actor in costume) to high profile events in each market. On each occasion the mannequin would be ‘dating’ a glamorous female star with a high profile in that market. This meant model Susan K at the Survivor TV Party in Denmark; Miss Belgium, Alizee Poulicek, at David Coulthard’s pit at the Belgium Grand Prix; model Carolina Gynning at a film premiere in Stockholm and actress Lieke Lexmond at the Netherlands Film Festival. Two international events saw Pamela Anderson ‘date’ the mannequin at Vivienne Westwood’s London Fashion Week show and Channel 5 presenter Laura Esposto at the ‘Burn after Reading’ premiere at Venice Film Festival. This helped to generate major press interest and PR. In each market an exclusive content deal with one key publication was negotiated (such as FHM) to ensure a minimum level of coverage. To raise the profile beyond this base level they used extensive online seeding and blogging, while employing a local PR agent in each market to gain exposure in more channels.

Despite a relatively low weight of press advertising, the campaign achieved a 6% increase in Van Gils suit sales. This was accompanied by a 90% increase in new visits to the Van Gils website.

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