2000—2001
Dr. Martens, Co-Creative Director
After a plethora of store visits and retailer conversations regarding the main brand, we undertook work site interviews and desk research to identify the target audience and the factors effecting purchasing behavior for the work boot.
We established there was a stink to this brand for our young, male target audience. The once new-wave music cool/gritty brand was now available in pink and being worn by tween girls. The brand no longer had appeal to them.
We stripped the brand back to its studs to identify its core values, and undertook finding their place in the modern industrial workplace.
We created a print campaign entitled Lucky Bastard. Based on the idea of good-humored envy of the workmate who landed the cushy job (like a carpenter friend of mine who got to work on the MTV Beach Party), it also has a British cheekiness to it.
And the boots worked (anti-static, waterproof, ESD, toe-protected, OSHA approved), so you’re a lucky bastard to be wearing them.
We also created a series of colorful in-store posters for retailers that were a pastiche of vintage worksite posters promoting safety in the workplace.
TONE
DR. MARTENS INDUSTRIAL (Snippet from brief)
This is not only an opportunity energize this category, but also reestablish the main brand’s core values and credibility after years of dilution. Those core values include British-ness (high quality, contemporary and from-over-there cool); Heritage (working class roots, counterculture and hardcore music) and Authenticity (the original work boot worn by postmen, police and factory workers in Britain).
While Blue Collar work is hard and gritty, but (as in many physically challenging situations) there is a definite camaraderie in the modern light industrial workplace, which is populated by young men who live in an ESPN Sportscenter-girls-with-overly-large-breasts-fast cars-how-much-can-you-drink-MTV-Beach-Party-rave world.
