Cypress-based Vans Inc. is out to maintain its momentum.
The apparel and footwear brand last week launched a global digital marketing campaign called “This Is Off The Wall,” which showcases stories of “Vans professional athletes, artists, musicians and other style setters who have long and personal histories with the brand.”
The campaign comes on the heels of a banner year for Vans, which notched 6% increase in revenue to a record $2.3 billion last year, making it the largest and fastest-growing brand for Greensboro, the N.C.-based parent VF Corp.
The company didn’t disclose the budget for the campaign, which features endorsers who are “are easily translatable around the world” and “shine a light on the passions that Vans has always supported.”
Ad placements include social media, websites “endemic” to the brand—think thrashermagazine.com and surfline.com—as well as whowhatwear.com and other “broader platforms that speak to our consumers on things that they care about that we as well care about, specific to music, art and fashion,” said Fara Howard, Vans’ vice president of global marketing.
“We are very digitally focused,” she said. “We know that our consumers are … always online, and so we want to make certain that we are where they are, so investing in digital and social is important for us to have ongoing conversation with our consumers. That’s very much what we did last year, for our 50th anniversary, and we’ll continue that.”
The campaign also will play out at the Vans Warped Tour music festival, Vans US Open of Surfing, Vans Pro Skate Park Series, Vans Pool Party—a skateboarding event that “brings together the biggest names” in deep bowl skateboarding—and at its House of Vans at the Mohawk, a temporary music and arts venue set up during the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas.
Vans sells merchandise in more than 100 countries and about 600 stores, and has roughly 7,000 employees, including an estimated 500 in Orange County.
—Mediha DiMartino
