Levis Strauss & Co. is taking a bold approach to reinvigorate its Dockers brand, specifically men’s khaki pants, which has been in a slow decline for the last 10 to 15 years.
In a new campaign, humor is the mainstay, poking light-hearted fun at the idea of masculinity and what it means to be a man today. The story lines play out across print, billboard, radio, social media, events and digital ads that rolled out this month. A TV spot will debut during Super Bowl XLIV on Feb. 7—the first time Dockers has featured an ad on this broadcast since 2002.
The campaign, created by DraftFCB in San Francisco, will run in more than 40 countries where the Dockers brand is sold. The brand has upped its marketing spend by 10% over 2008, the last time it advertised in print and broadcast.
Jennifer Sey, vice president of global marketing for Dockers, talks about what went wrong and how her team plans to fix it.
PROMO: What caused the Dockers brand to decline so significantly?
SEY: There are a couple of things. The category demand has fallen off in general over the last five years, so it’s not just Dockers. And we had a failure to put new and interesting product into the market. It’s just been more of the same from everybody.
PROMO: Did competitors move in?
SEY: Jeans brands have done a great job of innovating with new fits and styles and washes and colors and that replaced khaki as kind of the go-to pant for men. The khaki used to be that and it’s just a failure to innovate.
PROMO: What did you do to update the brand?
SEY: We’ve renovated the product line entirely. We have a fairly broad line that can be wore casually, but we’ve also got a whole new line of khakis in a range of fits and colors—even reds and greens and blues—as well as patterns.
PROMO: How have you changed marketing?
SEY: In the last two years, we’ve definitely invested far less than we had in the past. The business was struggling and we needed to manage expenses. But going forward, having a point of view that we really believe in, we’re going to invest in the brand.
PROMO: What is the budget for this campaign?
SEY: In, 2009, we didn’t spend anything in advertising; everything was spent on upgrading the in-store experience, so it’s an exponential increase from there. The major investment was in hard goods, the frames, the branding and the fixturing. We’ll update all the paper goods this year to fit with the new campaign. We’ll have new products on the floor and we’ll provide support for those.
PROMO: What demographic are you trying to reach?
SEY: We have two targets: most broadly it’s men 25 to 49. Within that we break it down into two segments: a man in his 40s who currently likes the Dockers brand, but even his khaki consumption has fallen off because we haven’t given him a reason to buy. And we have a growth target. He’s in his 30s. He’s more style involved and wants to look up to date. Dockers hasn’t been a favorite for him, but with the new campaign we think we can appeal to him.
PROMO: How is social media fitting in?
SEY: It’s a part of the plan. It’s important to take a comprehensive approach to engage consumers. Not every consumer will engage in the social media realm, but with those that do I think we have an opportunity to deeply engage with them. There’s a lot we can do in the social space to engage men in conversation.
PROMO: What social media will you use?
SEY: We’ll be very active in the Facebook space. We’ve engaged two documentary filmmakers to create a documentary, sponsored by Dockers, about what it means to be a man today. The purpose is to start a conversation about this. It’s available on YouTube right now and will be available on our Facebook site and will spread from there virally. We just put the trailer out a few weeks ago and we’re already seeing some activity: The Art of Manliness and AskMen.com already blogged about it.
PROMO: How do you determine if the social media effort works?
SEY: We’re all learning about this. It’s not the same kind of direct ROI that you might be able to track if you run radio ads for a month. Part of the work we need to do this year is to determine how all the things in the mix contribute to sales as well as equity gains. We’re working on that right now. We’ll also measure brand chatter on the Internet as well as in the real world.
PROMO: When will you know if the overall campaign is effective?
SEY: We need to give it a moment. We’re just launching at the regional level and we’ll launch nationally in February with a Super Bowl ad and I would expect to see a fairly immediate increase in sales velocity after that ad runs.
PROMO: What’s unique about this campaign compared to others for Dockers?
SEY: This idea of masculinity and what it means to be a man today, always with a sense of humor, is something very different than what we have done in the past, which was focused on a lifestyle message. We think we have something that’s highly differentiated and relevant to get men engaged and talking about the brand the way that we did back when it launched in 1987.
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