BARBOUR ‣ ICONS IN QUILTING - DIGITAL ACTIVATION

Barbour is an iconic British luxury fashion brand, best known for its signature waxed jackets that have been worn by the likes of Princess Diana and Kate Middleton. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of its Liddesdale quilted jackets, Barbour invited us to craft a digital amplification campaign that would introduce Barbour’s iconic quilt to audiences in four cities around the world: London, New York, Shanghai, and Seoul.

Fake out-of-home advertising uses CGI to enhance reality by immersing viewers in surreal scenes set in real-life locations. With many luxury fashion brands harnessing the power of FOOH as part of their marketing strategy in recent years, we wanted to bring a unique twist to the trend that still felt premium and memorable amidst a saturated social media landscape.

To do this, we wanted each video to feel candid, framed as if it were shot on a phone (which it was!).

Each video consists of three scenes, capturing ordinary locations from everyday life, as well as iconic landmarks like New York’s skyline taken over by Barbour’s signature quilt, which was created and animated in CGI. In this way, we used CGI to elevate scenes from these four cities in a way that felt both premium and unmistakably Barbour.

To tie the videos to the brand’s heritage and pay homage to the British countryside, the birthplace of Barbour, each video included scenes of people wearing Barbour quilted jackets going about their day-to-day lives in the city, leaving behind nature trails of British plants and flowers in their wake. This, combined with the quilted fabric growing over iconic landmarks like buildings and bridges, gave each video a feeling of being firmly rooted in the brand’s heritage.

As creating the quilted fabric and British flora in CGI was an integral part of the project, we worked with 3D artist Kryštof Ježek to bring the quilt to life. To ensure that viewers were fully immersed in each of the scenes, it was crucial that the quilt and flora felt natural, and the composition struck a balance between the digitally generated assets and actual footage that was shot.

In addition to the four city-specific videos, we also created videos of the quilt and British flora taking over two iconic department stores: La Rinascente in Milan, Italy and the Fenwick in Newcastle, England.

With the four videos set in cities all around the world, we had the opportunity to collaborate with local production partners in New York, Shanghai, and Seoul to bring our vision to life. From the beginning, during the scriptwriting process, we brought in the local teams’ insight to ensure that the scenes and locations that we scouted were places that would feel authentic and recognisable not only to international viewers but also city residents. Later, we called upon the local teams’ expertise in casting extras and shooting footage for the final videos. A global collaboration through and through, this project was a great opportunity to bring together talented creatives and producers from all around the world.