Fragments Nº13: For The Ride Of Life
The in and outs of a great (modern) brand platform, Hotel cosplay, wonky e-commerce and soundtracks to 1970s Photographers
It takes time for ideas to find their footing.
I thought about this as Kontoor Brands (owner of Wrangler and Lee) posted another quarter of solid growth. (TL:DR is up 4% in a challenging market, with growth in all channels.) This is particularly important for me because of my role in the evolution of the brand platform ‘For The Ride of Life’.
I think Brand Platforms can sometimes be greatly misunderstood. They can underwhelm, defined narrowly as merely a tagline, yet equally, they can become so bloated and unwieldy that they lack the ability to pivot and shape with the brand, its business, and marketing needs.
So, a ‘perfect’ Brand Platform is both solid and fluid, able to be executed externally and consistently delivered internally.
I thought about that challenge when I saw Wrangler's newest campaign. It is a first for the brand created in-house but a continuation of the ‘For The Ride of Life’ platform I helped define, create, and shape back in 2021.
This Glossy article (which also discussed our ability to execute high-concept ideas with care and fidelity in-house at Esprit) directly addressed the opportunities and challenges of creating campaigns in-house. Much to the chagrin of agencies, a lot of that work can be done in-house, and it does reduce timelines and approvals in a practical and valuable way, certainly within fashion and apparel retail.
But the (many) reasons that the Wrangler spot works so well are that it comes from the point of view of confidence and assuredness, which an agency partner can positively bring to the table.
In 2021, while CoVid was still on our mind, We pitched the Wrangler business. Wrangler was looking for a new brand platform to unite its three businesses: a cowboy/Workwear-centric US market, a style-driven one in Europe, and a youth-driven emerging one in Asia.
After much discussion (and manifesto-writing….), ‘For The Ride of Life’ became that platform. It was an idea built around courage, joy, and universal attitudes that could withstand product and market shifts and actively work within them.
There were multiple reasons this platform worked for the brand.
It was grounded in the brand, audience, and product truths, which meant that communication, in whatever form, from collaborations (such as Staud, PBR) to core brand messaging, the platform was augmented by association and context it was given outside of just ‘brand’ moments.
It spoke to different audiences without losing the core grounding of what makes the brand unique. Everyone can see themselves in the idea, and even though it’s expansive, it’s not out of reach.
The platform felt like something the brand would naturally say. (We weren’t forcing it in short). So, it can be flexed as a traditional sign-off in front of the work.
Since that platform was introduced, it’s helped contextualize the brand and provide conceptual grounding for its efforts. You can see work on my site, but the success of brand platforms like this is how well they solidify the position and allow room to grow and breathe. The idea of being For The Ride of Life doesn’t have limits on age, locale, job, or personal circumstances. It can feel collective and individual. Profound or poppy, whenever it’s deployed.
(Below: The 2021 Brand launch Campaign)
But the best part? It’s easy to understand.
This is where brand platforms can fundamentally help in-house teams deliver work. Brand Platforms are, in some ways, political footballs. Their effectiveness can be measured in how easy it is for stakeholders outside the marketing or product function to understand. They can even see it in their own lives, not just in the context of the businesses.
This is even more relevant when you compare the evolution from 2021 to 2024. It’s the same themes, ideas, and thought that many people can co-exist and thrive in a brand like Wrangler. It might not be the same sweeping execution, but the spirit is there. Elements have matured and evolved. As the marketplace for Western Denim has grown stronger, 1970s elements have become more pronounced (Including the David Dundas’s 1970s hit “Jeans On”)
Agencies are sometimes ill-equipped to understand the whole gamut of needs an excellent brand platform has to address internally. But when it does work, it makes the entire brand easier and, therefore, easier for the brand to work with.
Now, onto other Fragments…
Music As A Form Of Research
Speaking of excellent Brand Platforms…
Stone Island’s “…As A Form of Research” platform continues to expand in exciting and dynamic ways. With its subcultural bonafide already well established, it’s no wonder that a new music platform for ‘Sound Is A Form Of Research.’ This one feels interesting becuase it combines playlists, community, and performances. I wouldn’t be surprised if you saw digital radio stations become integrated into this platform - especially ones where video streaming is as vital as audio streaming. A great way to cross-pollinate product and platform.
More on Wallpaper here.
What Happens Behind Closed Doors…
Hotels are moving into collabs with increasing frequency to get the attention of younger audiences. You can argue the merits of this as a positive or negative. Certainly for ‘chain’ luxury hotels. Unlike, let’s say, an Oetker Collection, where the group takes a back seat to the hotels, groups like The Ritz Carlton achieve a standard of excellence, sometimes at the expense of infidelity and flair.
However, the Late Checkout Collaboration seeks to counter that by leaning into (deliberately or not) the dusty sensibility of 1960s and 1970s films set within hotels. HOTEL, the 1967 potboiler, is the classic of this genre.
In the LinkedIn post that announced this collaboration, a commenter recalled a question relevant to the topic presented at a Ritz Carlton conference 20 years ago: “How do we blow the dust off the lion and crown (logo/brand) without blowing it up?"
This is how you do it. Mashing the old with the new and entertaining along the way.
Those films and TV shows dramatised the dynamics of the guests rather than the building itself. The buildings became backdrops to the interior psychodramas.
The last twenty years of hotels have been the inverse of that idea. See Costes making compilation albums or The Standard Hotel’s entire programming methodology. The destination made you, not you making the destination.
By flipping this dynamic on its head, collaborations like this open up something new for brands that aren’t as beloved or deified in the market.
(Shoutout to Georgia Brewer for first bringing my attention to the work).
Chaos Commerce
I’m sure e-commerce purists would kill me, but this website from Superstich MFG out of Paris SLAPS.
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LOVE & RAIN
This week’s music drop is twofold - and equally wonderfully obscure.
First, the brilliant Love Injection collective, a mainstay of the New York dance scene, with their weekly show on the Lot Radio and essential Fanzine but, as you would imagine, has excellent taste in music. So their monthly(?) Spotify Playlist is one to savor and spend quality time with. Mainly because of its inclusion of the below slice of insanity. A remix of Kerri Chandler’s RAIN by noted Jazz percussionist Carlos Niño but done in what can only be termed an ECM-style electronic jazz experiment. Parts melodic, parts masochistic. A fascinating piece of work.
Secondly, here’s an interview on the (excellent) Aquairuim Drunkard with personal music hero J.Spaceman. (AKA Jason Pierce of Spiritualized). One of the things I love about the J. Spaceman persona has always been the ability to dip back into the freeform, jazz, psych, and noise world of peak Spacemen 3. This newest partnership with John Coxon takes this similar form by providing a (belated) soundtrack to William Eggleston’s frazzled home movie experiment ‘Stranded In Canton.’
I like what J. Spaceman (Pierce) alludes to here about how soundtracks create this incredible potential for creativity.
“there’s a huge liberation that comes with writing soundtracks. I don’t get nearly enough work like that. It seems like a lot of times with movies, they go for what they know, the sort of the trusted few. A lot of soundtracks are written after the movie has been shot. So there’s a time constraint. But both times I found it incredibly liberating because it’s working to order. I don’t have to front it. I don’t have to stand and say, “This is where I’m at, this is what, this is where I am musically.” And there’s something incredibly liberating about that. It allows you to go in from any angle and to maybe explore things that aren’t forefront in my mind at the moment, but suit the film.
An Announcement!
I’m formalizing my brand consulting practice for fashion and luxury brands, called…The Society Of The Spectacle.
Since leaving ESPRIT, I’ve had the pleasure of working with Marc Jacobs, a (NDA’d) tech brand, on their luxury retail strategy and menswear brand Applied Art Forms on positioning and GTM.
If you’re looking for a full-time or fractional brand and marketing consultant for your fashion or luxury brand, give me a shout here. I’m booking projects from mid-November onwards.
More Next Week!