We put Levi's in the middle of an election without putting it on a side.
People vote for principles, not people. That reframed turnout for a generation already marching, posting and arguing about everything they believed in.
ROLE
Creative Direction · Art Direction · Design · Experience Creation · Strategic Advocacy · Production Leadership
CLIENT
Levi's
AGENCY
AKQA
SCOPE
Social · Digital · E-commerce · In-store · Customized apparel · OOH
The problem
Levi's had a partnership with Rock the Vote and wanted to lift turnout in an election year, in the middle of a pandemic. The brief underneath it was harder than it sounded: align the brand with values, at scale, and still sell product. Roughly half of Americans had sat out the previous general election, many of them because they could not align with a candidate or a party.
What I did
Won the strategy back first. The Levi’s account had quietly stopped getting strategy scoped, and this brief could not run on a hunch. The account director and I got vocal and won it back for a few projects, this one included. The research changed the whole premise: young people were not apathetic, they had no shortage of passion for the principles they cared about, from equal rights to climate change. They just were not translating it into votes.
Made it a yes-and rather than a lecture. The campaign never told anyone to start caring. It asked them to do one more thing with everything they already felt. Don't just talk about it, march about it, post about it, dream about it. #VoteAboutIt.
Built it for the feed first. A four-month calendar ran to election day driving to a hub of resources and education so anyone who cared about something could find out how to act on it. In-feed content was built to be reposted to stories, which mattered in a year when voter suppression was doing real damage and peer-to-peer information traveled further than any brand's. From there it extended into customized apparel, in-store signage and a placement on Levi's own Times Square billboard.
Shot it with almost nobody. Levi's had planned a product-only studio shoot with no call for models. A campaign about people needed people, so I pushed for something real. Casting agencies were not an option, and neither was a full crew, so we built both from people already in each other's bubbles. I put the campaign's senior art director behind the camera. The lead designer brought in his Covid pod, and Levi's employees filled out the rest.
IMPACT
A brand took a values position in an election year without alienating half its customers
Levi's extended the platform into a national voting PSA with Hailey Bieber and filmmaker Oge Egbuonu, produced separately by the brand
The first permitted production shoot in San Francisco after Covid restrictions began · Times Square billboard placement
The art direction drew partly on photojournalism from the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, while aiming for a positive, optimistic and youthful view of voting and registration. Many images were captured with the cast in action, to convey forward momentum.
Posts covered passion points like climate and community alongside general voter awareness and motivation, and were made to be reposted so followers could pass on information that helped combat voter suppression.
The hub everything drove to: how to check your registration, what was on your ballot, and how to act on the issue that brought you there.
Paid placement carried the line beyond Levi's own audience.
Customised apparel and in-store signage carried the line into the places people already bought Levi's.
Levi's own Times Square billboard.
Cast and crewed from our own team, with the campaign's senior art director behind the camera.
