NOW/&&
BREAD & BUTTER 2016
LAUNCH
Bread & Butter was a new event platform by Zalando which debuted in 2016. I was a senior creative in the launch team.
One of the challenges was that the Bread & Butter brand was already known in some circles from its previous incarnation as a trade show. Zalando had bought the brand, but the existing brand values didn’t sit easy with Zalando’s bright, open, digital pop. So, what do you do?
All-out pop!
To make sure the event felt authentic and credible to a clued up fashion crowd, we had to find a distinctively ‘Zalando’ way of approaching both the programming and the form it would take. Working with designers Craig & Karl was a key decision: their use of primary colours and crazy bold graphics represented a big departure from what Bread & Butter had been.
We wanted to send a signal and we did. The challenge for the in-house creatives was to integrate their ideas into Zalando’s voice and asethetic, and to establish a unifying concept to hold it all together. We called it, simply, NOW.
Much of the collaborations and programming was shamelessly mainstream: A$ap Rocky, Gigi Hadid and Tommy Hilfiger, with areas curated by crowdpleasers like Adidas, Converse, Vans, G-Star, Levi’s, Topshop, and Eastpak. But the brands, rather than playing it safe, seemed to find the format and theme liberating. Nike, for example, taking over the far corner of the site, threw a full-on all-day rave-cum-workout. It was wild.
Pushing things forward
To balance out the pop, there were also weirder, edgier goings on. Boiler Room curated the musical lineup, taking the ‘NOW’ theme as an excuse to eschew safety in favour of up-and-coming talent and unfamiliar sounds, which gave the party an edge you wouldn’t normally expect from such a commercial event.
Other experimentation was quieter, but rewarding for those curious enough to investigate. One such otherworldly installation was Project Muze, an ai/machine learning collaboration that I was personally involved in, bringing together multiple Zalando teams, Google Zoo and UK production agency Stink.
Impact
The three day event attracted 20,000 visitors, including industry types from around the world as well the cool kids and the bloggers and the techies and hedonists of all kinds. All this engagement and activity generated on average €2 worth of positive media for every euro spent on production, with over 800million media impressions.
“Shareability was king with very instagrammable product installations and hang-out spots, lots of on-site picture boxes and video opportunities. And these were used.”
- Sportswear International, 5 Sept 2016
Project Muze, meanwhile, attracted attention from both the fashion and the tech world, with features in Wired and TechCrunch as well as Elle and Drapers.
One of the challenges was that the Bread & Butter brand was already known in some circles from its previous incarnation as a trade show. Zalando had bought the brand, but the existing brand values didn’t sit easy with Zalando’s bright, open, digital pop. So, what do you do?
All-out pop!
To make sure the event felt authentic and credible to a clued up fashion crowd, we had to find a distinctively ‘Zalando’ way of approaching both the programming and the form it would take. Working with designers Craig & Karl was a key decision: their use of primary colours and crazy bold graphics represented a big departure from what Bread & Butter had been.
We wanted to send a signal and we did. The challenge for the in-house creatives was to integrate their ideas into Zalando’s voice and asethetic, and to establish a unifying concept to hold it all together. We called it, simply, NOW.
Much of the collaborations and programming was shamelessly mainstream: A$ap Rocky, Gigi Hadid and Tommy Hilfiger, with areas curated by crowdpleasers like Adidas, Converse, Vans, G-Star, Levi’s, Topshop, and Eastpak. But the brands, rather than playing it safe, seemed to find the format and theme liberating. Nike, for example, taking over the far corner of the site, threw a full-on all-day rave-cum-workout. It was wild.
Pushing things forward
To balance out the pop, there were also weirder, edgier goings on. Boiler Room curated the musical lineup, taking the ‘NOW’ theme as an excuse to eschew safety in favour of up-and-coming talent and unfamiliar sounds, which gave the party an edge you wouldn’t normally expect from such a commercial event.
Other experimentation was quieter, but rewarding for those curious enough to investigate. One such otherworldly installation was Project Muze, an ai/machine learning collaboration that I was personally involved in, bringing together multiple Zalando teams, Google Zoo and UK production agency Stink.
Impact
The three day event attracted 20,000 visitors, including industry types from around the world as well the cool kids and the bloggers and the techies and hedonists of all kinds. All this engagement and activity generated on average €2 worth of positive media for every euro spent on production, with over 800million media impressions.
“Shareability was king with very instagrammable product installations and hang-out spots, lots of on-site picture boxes and video opportunities. And these were used.”
- Sportswear International, 5 Sept 2016
Project Muze, meanwhile, attracted attention from both the fashion and the tech world, with features in Wired and TechCrunch as well as Elle and Drapers.
