Kenny Mitchell, chief marketing officer at Levi Strauss & Co., knew his team needed to move fast after Beyoncé released the track list for her album “Cowboy Carter” in March. Out of the 27 songs listed, one provided the denim brand’s marketing department with a huge opportunity: “Levii’s Jeans.”
While in Paris to celebrate his wife’s 50th birthday, Mitchell was communicating across time zones with his team back at the company’s San Francisco headquarters to figure out how they could capitalize on the moment. When the songs dropped that week, Levi’s had landed on adding an extra I to the brand’s Instagram name, as Beyoncé had with her song.
Still, Mitchell thought the brand could go further.
“Once that album came out, it was obviously a moment where we said, Hey, maybe we can start to have some conversations about whether a deeper partnership makes sense,” Mitchell said.
Soon after, Levi’s reached out to Beyoncé and her team. The two camps had already worked together on various campaigns and creative projects over the years. She had worn their jeans when she was a member of Destiny’s Child in the early 2000s, making Levi’s one of the first brands to collaborate with the group, and she continued to incorporate the brand in her solo career.
What soon became apparent for executives at Levi’s after the release of “Cowboy Carter” was that Beyoncé could be the key to achieving one of the company’s top strategies: convincing more women to shop the brand.
A third of Levi’s shoppers are women. The plan, executives say, is to bump that to 50%.
On Monday, after a week of hints on social media, Levi’s announced a global campaign with Beyoncé called “REIIMAGINE” that will stretch into 2025. It will unfold over four chapters, leaning heavily on the history of the company, which was founded in 1853, with the focus shifted to women.
The first iteration is a commercial directed by cinematographer Marcell Rev that the company is blanketing across its social media profiles, e-commerce sites and stores. It is a spin on the company’s popular “Laundrette” television spot, which featured singer Nick Kamen and aired in Britain in 1985.
The new ad clings closely to the original format: Beyoncé steps into a laundromat wearing Levi’s 501s, as well as a white T-shirt from the brand and a denim cowboy hat with the signature red Levi’s tag. As she dramatically wiggles out of her jeans to put them in the washing machine, other customers turn in her direction in awe. The original ad’s Marvin Gaye song is replaced with one by Beyoncé.
“Not only did it modernize it, and it’s Beyoncé and all of the goodness that comes from that,” said Levi’s CEO Michelle Gass, “but I think, importantly, it really does put a female lens on this approach on the campaign, and that squarely fits into one of our key strategies: winning with women.”
Levi’s first introduced a pair of jeans specifically designed for women in 1934. It was a time, particularly in the American West, when women had a newfound sense of independence. They needed something practical to wear for physical activity instead of just borrowing their husband’s and brother’s jeans, said Tracey Panek, the in-house historian for Levi’s.
In 1968, the brand expanded its offerings with Levi’s for Gals, an entire department specifically for women. In the latter half of the 20th century, through well-publicized marketing campaigns and pivotal moments like being the official outfitter of Team USA in the 1984 Olympics, Levi’s cemented its place as a cultural institution.
A host of celebrities, including Beyoncé, would wear their jeans on red carpets and at cultural events. In 2001, when she was still part of Destiny’s Child, Beyoncé wore the brand’s Superlow jeans on the red carpet for the MTV Video Music Awards and discussed them during an interview.
In the 2010s, however, Levi’s started losing its cool factor as it struggled to adjust to athleisure trends and new denim cuts that young millennial shoppers gravitated toward. This was particularly true of female shoppers.
“Skinny jeans were so popular for so long, it was almost like there was no room for anything else,” said Jill Guenza, who leads women’s design at Levi’s.
After conducting yearslong market research on what women wanted, the company overhauled its women’s merchandise in 2015. Designers made the stitching more distinctive and the back patch bigger to emphasize the shapeliness of women’s figures.
“It looked like a pair of Levi’s again,” Guenza said.
Levi’s expects that by the end of the year, with a boost from Beyoncé, its women’s business will bring in $2 billion in sales, Gass said. In the past three months, that sector of the company has seen an 11% increase, with double-digit growth in sales of its bottoms and tops.
“What this partnership does is,” Gass said, it “just furthers us into being relevant. I think this is the biggest one we’ve ever done.”—NYT
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
