underground
“Brand loyalty among teens needs rethinking,” the fashion guru challenged. “Ever think of being an anti-brand?” I answered.
FASHION TRADE COPY: Underground isn’t just about clothes. It can’t be. In fact, we’re of the opinion that nothing is only about what we see on the surface. There’s something else going on. Something wicked. Or kind. Or stupid. Or wonderful. We’re sure about this, because every one of us has a very private world going on underneath. Secret. Dark. Deep.
(Station: Marble Arch): There’s this other world underneath that they’ll never know about me. It’s a place I need to go all by myself when I want to go anywhere. 
(Station: Rayners Lane): I stared him down and he just froze and stared back, and there was this thing we were both thinking of, which was the time we were really little and we set fire to the umbrella on the patio in his backyard, and it kept spinning in the wind and throwing off these bullets
of fire.
(Station: Chalfont & Latimer): My father keeps asking me if everything’s all right. He thinks he doesn’t know how to talk to me anymore. He thinks I forgot when we used to be best friends. I didn’t forget anything, I just don’t need to watch old videos to remember. That’s all, it’s really no big thing.
(Station: Liverpool Street)
(Station: Mornington Crescent): My theory on this thing is that ideas are more powerful in motion, and me and my large man are flying into an electric storm of some pretty nastified experimentation of the heart.
So be it girl.
(Station: Morden): Everybody’s looking at me and seeing my father or boyfriend whatever. But what the hell, a girl can’t get her face cross checked into the glass and smashed into the ice by some goon sent in to stop the scoring spree in the first period or something? Speaking of periods goddammit
(Station: Stratford & Barking): My dick is just sitting out there with my wrinkled balls flapping in the breeze and nobody in this car has a clue how this feels at 60 miles per hour and they still think we hang our tongues out because it’s the way we breathe or whatever. Hey (sniff, sniff), do I smell a morsel or did she fart again?
(Station: All Saints): I saw myself 60 years from now sitting across from me. (I saw myself 60 years ago sitting across from me.) I thought God you’re so old you don’t know shit. (I thought God you’re so young you didn’t know shit.) I decided to confess something to myself 60 years from now. (I decided to accept my confession 60 years ago.)
(Subway Station Great Portland Street)
Last stop, fictional station: DEEP
Exec Summary
Category Thinking: Just give ‘em photos of supermodels in cool clothes, slap on the logo, and pray.
New Insight: The 13-21 year old market prides themselves on not being fooled, not being loyal followers. Give them a “place” for venting their own deep feelings about…anything, to each other. Give them a pen and paper, a microphone, a wall, a site. Give them space and a place to speak, to cry out, to be pissed off, to feel something deeply and express it freely, outrageously, without fear of anything or anyone. Out of sight and underground.
New Position: Underground doesn’t belong to us. Underground is theirs, it belongs to them.
Result: Ask Jan, this one’s deep and purposely cryptic in its development…
Full Case Study
Situation: A fashion guru with Guess and XOXO and Jones New York and others in his portfolio, wanted to start a new line of clothing for teens and young adults, 13-21. Brands and the stores that cater to this segment proliferate. Margins keep getting tighter. Stores have insane leverage on everything from price to display. Yet, retail is as hungry for the revenue from this market as are their manufacturing and design wholesale vendors.
Category Thinking: Just give ‘em photos of supermodels in cool clothes, slap on the logo, and pray.
New Insight: You may think that just because they wear a brand name, they’re brand conscious or brand loyal. You may think they’re going through the same puberty and adolescent angst you went through. You may think lots of things, but it may not be right, or even close to what they’re really thinking about and going through. What if the very attempt to understand this lucrative but fleeting young market was the problem itself? In trying to “get them” you betrayed your ignorance of ever getting them or “it.” What if you listened, really listened, for a change. Give them a “place” for venting their own deep feelings about…anything, to each other. Give them a pen and paper, a microphone, a wall, a site. Give them space and a place to speak, to cry out, to be pissed off, to feel something deeply and express it freely, outrageously, without fear of anything or anyone. Out of sight and underground.
Solution: Underground (think the iconic London subway logo) would be a brand that’s not a brand. Or at least isn’t our brand. It’s theirs. They invent it from the grassroots, logo up. Via their own media choices and inventions (diaries), they’re the ones who buzz and spread it, change it, communicate it, kill it, revive it, celebrate it, criticize it, love it, hate it, make a whole new world for it. We just get them started, with 10,000 blank new diaries spread around where they hang, in real time, online, wherever. And we get them going with the first few pages of real kids with their real entries. Note the graphic overlay of each local subway station/map locationwhere the diary originates or travels through. This is their territory, their ‘hood, and in that way, the more authentic expression of the brand they identify with.
New Position: Underground doesn’t belong to us. Underground is theirs, it belongs to them.
Result: Ask Jan, this one’s deep and purposely cryptic in its development…
