👋, I’m Kimberly. I’ve been creating obsession-worthy brands for the past fifteen years. And now, I’m giving away my secrets every week in this newsletter.
Whether your brand is a Goliath dominating a market or an on-the-shorter-side David throwing stones — every brand in the world can benefit from a big and bold campaign that gets people talking.
Next up on The Boldest List…
The Campaign for Shoes Made from Recycled Sex Toys
On July 15, LA-based brand Rose in Good Faith dropped its first shoe — a sneaker the company had been developing for two years.
Made from foam, the shoes have a lot going for them…
They’re water resistant! They have built-in arch support! They have a moldable cork insole!
Oh, and they’re made from recycled (unused) sex toys!
The brand partnered with toy manufacturer Doc Johnson, the world’s largest pleasure products manufacturer since 1976, who gave them subpar toys that didn’t make it past quality controls for one reason or another and were set to get scrapped.
Instead of sending them to the heap, Rose in Good Faith reduced them to millimeter-sized cubes of thermoplastic elastomer mixed with EVA foam to create the material for its shoe, named “The Plastic Soul.”
The Very Best Things About This Campaign
First, and most obviously, it was a brilliant marketing and PR move to use recycled sex toys as their material.
In a world where most companies are trying to find creative ways to do right by the environment, especially when it comes to their materials and packaging, it’s also become true that very little is press-worthy anymore.
But this was, by nature of its shock value.
It got the brand’s shoe launch featured in many prominent publications — and got people talking about the brand who had never heard of it before.
The second brilliant thing was the varied creative executions the brand developed.
To build up anticipation around the launch of the shoe, they put out a series of ads that all hit different notes.
They started with ads like this, which looked beautiful and didn’t talk about the material — letting the design of the shoe stand on its own.
They also showed evocative ads that hinted at something interesting happening with nature, without saying too much.
Then they released this ad, in which the shoe’s material was not the main — but made for a perfect punchline in a series.
The creative executions got bolder and bolder.
In the next ad, an arresting and clever headline paired with an evocative visual captured immediate attention.
Then we got to this ad, the boldest of the bunch.
Here, the copy does some very serious talking.
By creating all of these unique variations on its message, any one of which stood alone as an attention-grabbing shoe campaign, Rose In Good Faith:
Created serious anticipation around its launch that built up to a crescendo.
Had varied marketing materials to work with in terms of testing and tailoring to different types of publications and audiences.
How You Can Do It Too
Step one — make friends with someone at a sex toy company.
Kidding, kidding. But that’s cool if you do.
Step one — think creatively about all of your materials.
Whether it’s the materials that make your product itself, like the shoes here, or something related to your packaging — how can you push the envelope by trying something different, or something that connects to your story in a fun way?
For example, we made the outer cartons of beauty brand Biossance’s packaging from sugar cane paper — and they make their skincare main molecule from sugar cane.
This gave the brand some fun storytelling moments, and something extra to tell the press.
Step two — space your campaign out, and give it multiple legs.
The next time you’re brainstorming a launch, try coming at it from a “how does this build” approach — and think of multiple campaign concepts that could be used to tell the story.
Each of these campaign concepts could work together, but not necessarily “go together” in a matchy-match, traditional sense of sharing similar copy and visuals… just like the examples above from Rose in Good Faith.
Then, you can either:
Space the campaign concepts out to feature them at different times
Use the campaign concepts in different contexts for different audiences.
This might mean having to be scrappy with a few of the concepts — but, it is perfectly possible to:
Do a big photoshoot for 1-2 executions (like Rose in Good Faith did for the sculptural photo and the photo with the flowers).
Let the other executions be more graphic and messaging-heavy (which will also make them less expensive to execute!).
Bonus: you’ll have a few options to test at the starting gate. And more options to keep running with post-launch.
Hope you enjoyed those two running puns in honor of this shoe-themed newsletter. Now, take these ideas and sprint away with them!
Ok, that was the last pun. See you at the finish line next week ;).
If you missed it, you can read the last issue of The Boldest List here.
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About Me
I help early-stage founders create the kind of brands that get customers so obsessed, they’ll do your advertising for you.
Based on my experience founding my own consumer brand, I developed The Branding Sprint—a uniquely collaborative, streamlined, and agile approach to brand creation.
Click here to learn more about The Branding Sprint, or schedule a call with me.