Vintage4Climate - University Project

I am about to graduate from King's College London, BA Liberal Arts with a major in Comparative Literature and minor in Political Economy. I know this degree sounds confusing for some, but it gave me an awesome opportunity to subjects I loved and enjoyed, and as a result, obtain an array of hard and soft skills across disciplines.

Nonetheless, my passion lies with marketing, so I couldn't miss a chance to do a module in Digital Advertising and Marketing in Spring Semester 2020. As our final projects, we had to develop advertising campaigns for one of the briefs we were given.

Mine was for Connect4Climate.

For this project I had to produce:

• Creative Brief
• Executive Summary
• Marketing research report

We also had to then gather into groups and produce presentations for our advertising strategies.

Providing a full research here would probably prove quite daunting to read, so I will restrict myself to providing my creative brief, executive summary, and presentation.

Brief:

Background

Connect4Climate is a global partnership program and a member of the World Bank Group. Its main aim is to promote sustainability on the individual level, showing that personal contribution can have a real impact on climate change. It has run multiple campaigns with young adults in mind, including fashion-related ones.

The Objective of the Campaign

For the audience to feel that they can have a positive impact on the environment through choosing sustainable fashion and conscious consumption over fast fashion even if they act alone.

Target Audience

The campaign’s target audience is females aged 20-25, who have a moderate interest in fashion. They use Instagram to follow their favorite influencers, and this is their best method to stay on-trend. Nonetheless, they lack the funds to keep up with changing styles, so they choose cheaper stores that try to imitate high-end fashion.

Consumer Insight

The target audience may have heard about climate change but feel like their contribution will not help the cause. They have other pressing issues such as college, jobs, relationships to occupy their thoughts, so they need a ready-made feasible solution that they can adapt for their fast-paced lives.

Your BIG idea

#Vintage4Climate campaign shows that it is possible to help the environment, stay stylish, and save money at the same time.

Campaign Location

The campaign will run on Instagram, raising awareness worldwide, as both chromo and local influencers will be employed. The message will spread even further through the participatory element, where the audience will share their vintage outfits and facts about sustainable fashion using a hashtag #vintage4climate.

Executive Summary

The fashion industry is the second largest pollutant in the world (UNECE, 2018), and the young generation with their love for fast-fashion encourages the brands to keep on producing.

Connect4Climate is looking for ways not only to raise awareness but also to inspire actions among the young audience. Being part of the World Bank, the company is not interested in profits of the campaign, but much rather in a proven track of altered spending habits from the target audience.

Clothing shopping is part of the audience’s daily life, and even a small change in purchasing habits can have a tremendously positive effect. The challenge then is to communicate that to the consumers.

The aims of Vintage4Climate include raising awareness about the environmental effect of the fashion industry, encouraging the target audience to adopt conscious consumption, and purchase few clothing pieces of quality vintage instead of multiple fast-fashion items.

The target audience of this campaign is females of 20-25 years old all over the world. The most effective medium of advertising for them is through social media, in particular Instagram. What’s more, they value a role-model’s opinion and advice, so the influencer marketing is the natural choice for this campaign. The influencers have the audience’s trust, but in order to make a conversion, it has been decided to select both chromo and local influencers. Chromo influencers will spread the general trend, while the local influencers will adapt it to a particular language, culture, and purchasing habits. Therefore, the target audience will feel as if the campaign speaks directly to them, to their interests, lifestyle, and worries.

Additionally, 20-25-year-old females have busy lifestyles, so in order to provide them with an instant solution, we are partnering with online platforms that sell vintage i.e. Vestiare, ASOS Marketplace, NastyGal. The influencers will direct the audience’s attention to these shops, where they can purchase relatively cheap quality vintage in a click. By starring their vintage outfits from these platforms, the influencers will also solidify that this campaign is “on trend”.

Finally, by introducing an interactive feature through a hashtag campaign with a prize, the campaign has all prospects for becoming viral and altering the shopping habits of millions. The latter will be measured over time by asking brands like ASOS whether their sales of vintage have risen comparatively to fast-fashion outfits.

Presentation:

Due to Covid-19 our assignment got canceled, so I never got a chance to receive any feedback on this, but I loved working on such a big scale and large impact campaign!