2022 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

For 70 years, Harry Rosen had built its luxury menswear brand on a high-touch retail approach. When men needed impeccable suits for work, they would visit the store and talk to their “guy.” The COVID-19 pandemic upended that approach. Stores closed. Harry’s business shifted to online. And Harry’s customers’ sartorial needs shifted as well. While the new virtual business culture freed many men from the suit and tie, all those Zoom calls posed a problem for men who wanted to express their style.

Harry’s challenge: maintain brand affinity and keep Harry Rosen top of mind to drive online sales and bring people back into stores when they opened up again.

With no media budget to spend, Harry set an ambitious target of 40,000 organic video views on Instagram. Whatever Harry did would need to earn buzz on its own merit.

Even as lockdowns eased in June 2021, 4.7 million Canadians were still working from home, with Harry Rosen’s office-dwelling customers dramatically overrepresented. While entire skyscrapers stood empty, the “dress for success” culture of business menswear
eased dramatically.

The insight: their ability to send a fashion signal in the virtual world is limited to one item and one item only — their shirts. They brought a surprising twist to a platform that was quickly becoming all too familiar: Zoom. In the first months of the pandemic, the number of total minutes spent on Zoom went from 100 billion to two trillion a year.

Harry Rosen’s master tailors were engaged to manufacture a shirt in fabric of the precise shade needed for green screening. By hitting the Green Screen checkbox on the Zoom platform and choosing a pattern, wearers could instantly change their shirt’s design. It was that simple. There was no software to install as the functionality was already
built into Zoom.

Knowing the luxury market loves a fashion drop, Harry chose Instagram for the shirt’s debut. Because there was no paid media budget, the campaign was launched as an organic contest solely on Harry’s Instagram feed.

To win a shirt, people had to tag two people and Like the post. A landing page on HarryRosen.com promoted Harry’s latest innovation and gave instructions on how the shirt worked while prompting visitors to shop the latest arrivals. The shirts were ready just in time for Father’s Day, a big day for Harry’s sales. The video generated more than 111,000 views on Instagram – three times Harry’s follower count –
with zero paid media.

All shirts were immediately claimed in the contest, so Harry is exploring a product rollout. It was the most engagement Harry has ever had for a contest.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Wain Choi
Art Director: Anton Garneau, Michael Romaniuk
Writer: Luke McNeil, Marco Buchar
Account Team: Michael Brathwaite
Client: Harry Rosen
Clients: Trinh Tham, Kristin Meier, Paul Michel
Producer: Christine Taranco
Production House: Zulubot
Production/Technical Advisor: Adam Palmer
Editor/Colourist: Felipe Chaparro
Photographer/Videographer: Kyle Wilson, Matt Watkins
Creative Director Harry Rosen: Christine Kwan
Photo Retoucher: Jim Tinios