Levi's and Braddock

In an era of high unemployment and diminishing national hopes, Levi’s intends to hearken back to a similarly dim time in American history as a way of illuminating the future. Built on the theme of “work,” with declarations like “Everybody’s Work is Equally Important” and “We Are All Workers,” the campaign evokes the Depression-era photographs of Dorothea Lange and the handmade aesthetic of the Works Progress Administration, the Roosevelt administration’s mammoth public works effort that helped put the United States back on its feet almost 80 years ago.


But this campaign won’t just use the town as a backdrop; it will sell the new Levi’s line of men’s work wear by selling the story of Braddock and its people. Local folk will be depicted as America’s “new pioneers,” rolling up their denim sleeves to build a new life for their town. Their images will be used in a TV and movie theatre ad shot by The Road director John Hillcoat and slapped on magazine spreads and billboards across North America. They will talk to the cameras of independent filmmaker Aaron Rose, and see their life stories transformed into a documentary posted on YouTube and airing on the Sundance Channel in the U.S. They will become the face of the brand. And Levi Strauss will do something else: it will tie itself to Braddock’s fate, donating $1-million to a local non-profit created to improve the quality of life, and tracking the effects of its philanthropy in hopes that it can help write a new chapter in the town’s history.

Levi’s, of course, is trying to revive its own fortunes. Once the No. 1 denim jean brand, with 30 per cent of the market, it has been on a decades-long slide. It failed to anticipate the premium jeans market, and abandoned the positioning that had fused its identity with the origin myth of American pioneers. The Braddock initiative looks to the future by embracing its own past.

If you scan the store shelves these days, it can sometimes feel as if brands are more interested in raising money for causes than in making and selling products. Stock up on toilet paper and you may be donating to the fight against cancer; buy some chocolate and you’re helping build a school in Ghana. More than ever, companies are trying to leverage the emotional equity embedded in a cause to help them form a deeper connection with consumers. And at the same time, people have bought into the argument that they can effect change more easily as consumers than as citizens. (Even the anti-consumption publication Adbusters has spoken of the need to “vote with your dollars.”) A study released this week by the Boston-based consulting firm Cone found that 81 per cent of Americans would like to have the opportunity to buy a cause-related product, up from 75 per cent just two years ago.

One of the largest such efforts is the Pepsi Refresh Project, a $25-million program funding small organizations across North America. Last month the Canadian division of Kia Motors rolled out “Drive Change,” a campaign based on unexpected acts of kindness, such as sending crews to build a community garden at an east-end Toronto housing project.

The Levi’s campaign, which evokes a time when government responsibility to its citizens was being wholly re-imagined, is especially rich and tangled. With the U.S. government either unable, because of its choking debt, or unwilling to play the resuscitative role it once did, Levi’s is trying to assume the role of guardian angel. “It is the responsibility of brands that believe in things to actually act on them, and act as the beacon that they can if the government can’t step in,” suggests Danielle Flagg, one of three Wieden creative directors on the Levi’s account.


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