Zalando
Free to be / Hidden beauty revealed
What
Brand narrative for Zalando (Europe’s biggest online fashion retailer) and pan-European launch campaign for Zalando Beauty.
Role: Copy, concept, Creative Director
Agency: Sunshine
Internal manifesto film | Zalando, Free to be
The Work
BRIEF: Imbue the cold heart of Zalando’s efficiency-based e-tail fulfillment operation with the loyalty-building warmth of emotion.
BRAND STORY: When it started in 2008, Zalando was Europe’s first mover in online fashion, making high street and high-end fashion available outside of its historic centers with reliable deliveries and a respectable returns policy.
With Amazon Fashion and others moving into the space however, we identified the liberation of self expression as Zalando’s reason to exist. Our brand narrative, Free to Be, became the basis for defining work by W+K, 180 Heartbeats and others.
IN A LINE: It’s not just about order fulfillment. It’s about self-fulfillment.
CREATIVE DEVELOPMENT: In its first act after its repositioning, Zalando launched Zalando Beauty across 13 European countries. Our hero film, Hidden Beauty Revealed, featured a hidden camera stunt to capture the transformative power of authentic beauty rituals in which street-cast models got night out-ready, unaware they were being filmed through a 2-way mirror.
For accompanying out-of-home, I created a simple adjective-feature-emotional benefit headline structure that would convey that transformative power while allowing for easy adaptation across multiple language markets.
