50 Years of Fame: Brandfame - Levi's

Marketing 21-Sep-05

Nestled somewhere in the subconscious of women in their 30s is a memory that can be recalled in a heartbeat: in a 50s launderette, Marvin Gaye's Heard it Through the Grapevine is playing and Nick Kamen has stripped down to his white boxer shorts.

Levi Strauss has been advertising on ITV since the early 60s, but it was
not until a new wave of advertising, created by Bartle Bogle Hegarty for
Levi's 501 jeans in the mid-80s, that its campaigns became part of

advertising folklore.

The ads, which burst onto screens on Boxing Day in 1985, have been
mimicked by other advertisers and spawned 16 top 20 singles in all,
seven of them going to number one.

Levi's TV activity is intimately intertwined with the company's
fortunes.

Back in 1985 it was encountering poor sales in a stagnant jeans
market.

The company's response was to return to its roots, and the linchpin of
this was the relaunch of the 501s - the original fly-button jean.

By the end of 1986 Levi's revolutionary TV ads had boosted sales of 501s
by 800%, shifting 800,000 pairs in the UK. Today Levi's sales are the
envy of its rivals. Last year European sales reached $1.42bn
(£790m), $920m (£511m) of that accounted for by its
classic Levi's brand.

Like most apparel brands, Levi's has been affected by changes in
fashion, but its TV advertising has enabled it to get the message to
consumers that it is not just about denim. It restricted TV support to
its 501 range until 1998, when the rise of the fashion for combat
trousers caused sales of denim jeans to slip again.

The company reacted by promoting its range of Sta-Prest non-denim
apparel and placed its fate the hands of an orange furry puppet. After
just a few weeks Flat Eric had earned cult status and there was a 181%
increase in UK consumers' awareness of the Sta-Prest brand.

In 2000 Levi's took its message back to its core offering to convince
young consumers to start wearing denim again. It put £5m behind
its Engineered Jeans sub-brand and a TV ad that showed a group of young
people twisting and contorting their limbs into strange positions.
Levi's market share rose from 10.6% in 1999 to 11.1% in 2000.

TV still plays the dominant role in Levi's advertising strategy and the
success it has brought the brand has encouraged it to invest strongly in
the medium.

This year's 'Midsummer Night's Dream' campaign for 501s with Anti-Fit
has been its biggest to date.