The Idle Man

D&AD launches competition briefs for undergraduates every year. I collaborated with a friend studying creative advertising on one of the competition briefs for a male clothing company called 'The Idle Man'. The company was asking for a campaign that will reach out to young males and influence them to use their website to shop online. It needed to be simple and straight to the point whilst addressing the many different styles and stereotypes in modern society.

Through our research we found that the typical male does not wish to be considered part of a stereotype. The vast majority of candidates within our survey declined to do so when asked to categorise their fashion sense, which lead us on to the notion of fashion being bought rather than owned, leaving not only us with feminine connotations attached to the word "fashion" but also less of a sense of individuality for the user. Fashion is considered to be something that is followed, and our audience did not want to be seen as followers. In order to draw forth a sense of individuality in the audience, we referred to the term 'Style' in place of fashion, which lead us on to the starting point in developing our proposition and creative strategy: Fashion is bought, style is taught.

 Taking our audiences desire not to be stereotyped into consideration, we stayed away from representing the I’s within the ad as conforming to particular identities. We made the designs representative of the range of clothing featured at The Idle Man. Rather than showing particular stereotypes, we varied the designs by showing a range of formalities available - Smart, Casual, and Smart-Casual. This helped communicate the range of clothing available at the website, gave variety and character to the campaign, and did not associate the company with any particular stereotype of man.

Through the use of Augmented Design we have brought the campaign to life in the hands of the audience. Having an interactive medium gives a twist to the campaign, setting The Idle Man apart from their competition by communicating to their audience in a more interesting, innovative way. The versatility of the augmented design allows for it to be used by anyone anywhere with a smartphone.

Unfortunately we did not win the competition this year but it gave us a little more experience on how to approach competition briefs.

Here is an example of augmented reality: