Levi Strauss & Co.: They Go On campaign Encyclopedia of Major ...

Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns
Volume 2, 2007
OVERVIEW
Levi Strauss & Co.: They Go On campaign
Mariko Fujinaka
Even though Levi Strauss & Company had been the cornerstone of the denim industry for over a century, declining sales plagued the
company during the latter half of the 1990s. Jeans designed by competing brands such as Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, and Calvin Klein had
encroached upon Levi's market share. Foote Cone & Belding, which had been Levi's ad agency since 1930, was set back after its executive
creative director, Mike Koelker, resigned in 1994. Koelker had served as an adviser to Levi's chief executive, Bob Haas, and had also
conceived the brand's most successful campaigns throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Hoping to stop declining sales and revitalize its
image, Levi's released its largest-ever advertising campaign, titled "They Go On."
The $90 million campaign began in 1997 and focused solely on the brand's image rather than specific products. Foote Cone & Belding
created six television commercials, most 60 seconds in duration, interwoven in a dreamlike fashion. According to Levi's, the spots "are
unusual in that they have no discernible beginning or end, and in many cases even rely on viewers to fill in the blanks." On September 22
the existing spots were merged with new ones to create a loosely connected drama that was released on the website NBC.com. The online
segment also let viewers interact with the actors by posting messages on the website. The campaign ended in 1998.
Although increased competition in the jeans market had affected Levi's market share, the company contended that the "They Go On"
campaign was intended as a celebration of the Levi's brand rather than a reaction to declining sales. The strategy proved ineffective. Even
though some advertising critics initially praised the campaign, Levi's executives and ad critics later considered the campaign to be a total
disaster. In 1998 Levi's reported its worst sales decline since World War II. It soon ended its 68-year relationship with Foote Cone &
Belding and reassigned its account to TBWA\Chiat\Day.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Levi's, founded in 1850, had dominated the jeans industry for more than a century, surviving the ups and downs of the U.S. economy.
When the denim market enjoyed revitalization in the 1990s, however, Levi's was slow to follow. Although Levi's was touted as the world's
biggest apparel manufacturer and reported record sales of $7.1 billion in 1996, its market share in the jeans area had slipped. The Los
Angeles Times reported figures from Tactical Retail Solutions, a firm specializing in tracking retail sales, that indicated a drop in Levi's
share of the men's jeans market from 48.2 percent in 1990 to 26.2 percent in 1997. Previous efforts to restore its position had included the
"It's Wide Open" campaign for Levi's Wide Leg jeans in 1996 and the ongoing "501 Reasons" campaign. Both campaigns garnered critical
acclaim but failed to restore Levi's status as the jeans-market leader. Profits, in fact, rose only 1 percent during the first quarter of 1997,
and in February Levi's announced that it would cut 1,000 jobs by year's end.
Spurred by declining jeans sales, the company turned to Foote Cone & Belding, its advertising agency since 1930, to help enhance Levi's
image, and the decision was made to concentrate on the strength of the brand and to scrap individual product campaigns. Brad Williams, a
marketing manager at Levi's USA, downplayed the significance of the new campaign strategy and explained to the San Francisco Business
Times, "This is more of a campaign-driven shift than an overall strategy of the brand … Moving away from product advertising is a better
way to characterize it than supplanting it." According to Advertising Age, Levi's ran a brand advertising campaign in March 1995, the first
time it had done so in more than a dozen years. The campaign included two spots with the tagline "They're not Levi's jeans until we say
they are," and it featured "Works Progress Administration era-style animation." The campaign was not well received, however, and the
spots were short-lived.
TARGET MARKET
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Levi's traditional market included males between the ages of 15 and 25, and "They Go On" was designed to include this consumer group as
well as older demographics. Trying to please the 15-25 age group while not alienating older customers proved a difficult task. Tom Fanoe,
president of Levi's USA, told the San Francisco Chronicle, "Our target consumer is 15 to 25 years old, so every few years we're dealing with
a whole new set of consumers who may or may not [have the same taste] as their older brothers or sisters." Fanoe elaborated on this
problem to the Los Angeles Times, admitting, "For many years, the Levi brand was the uniform of younger people … and we were also able
to nurture a relationship with people 25 years of age and older. In the last few years, that's been more problematic for us." CSC
Consulting analyst Marie Drum Beninati agreed: "Boomers got older and started looking for more comfort than they can get from Levis.
And while kids still wear jeans, it's a different kind of jeans—wide jeans, jeans hanging down over their derriere, jeans made from other
materials."
Concurrent with Levi's loss of market share was a growing decline in popularity with the youth market that accounted for a large
percentage of jeans purchases. In order to ensure future buyers, it was crucial to gain the allegiance of customers from a young age.

Unfortunately for Levi's, its market share with the consumer group of 15- to 19-year-olds dropped from 33 percent in 1993 to 26 percent in
1997. Levi's learned that this statistic was not a fluke when a yearlong research project indicated that the "echo boomers," children of baby
boomers, considered Levi's passé. Steve Goldstein, vice president of marketing and research for Levi's USA, told BusinessWeek, "Kids say
they love the Levi's brand. But if you ask them whether it's 'with it,' they'll say no." Sixteen-year-old Irma Cruz stated in the Columbian,
"Levi's are too straight, too plain … None of my friends wear them." Levi's needed to present a fashionable and modern campaign that
would win over these consumers.
COMPETITION
As more players entered the lucrative denim market in the 1990s, Levi's faced growing competition. According to the 1998 Market Share
Reporter, VF Corporation, the maker of Lee and Wrangler jeans, held 30.1 percent of the U.S. market, compared to Levi's at 16 percent.
Designer labels also infiltrated the market, with Guess, Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein's CK, Nautica, Diesel, and Ralph Lauren's Polo among
the high-end labels fighting for market share. Gap, along with its Old Navy clothing line, also posed a threat. Private-label jeans, such as
J.C. Penney's Arizona line and Sears, Roebuck's Canyon River Blues series, also entered the market and gobbled up valuable jeans
dollars. According to the Tactical Retail Monitor, as reported in the Los Angeles Times, private-label jeans experienced a rise in market
share from 3.2 percent in 1990 to 19.1 percent in 1997.
Alan Millstein, a New York retail consultant and editor of Fashion Network Report, told Advertising Age, "Levi's is in a pincers from the
private-label and specialty brands in department stores and the designer brands." According to the Los Angeles Times, Tony Cherbak, a
Deloitte & Touche retail-industry analyst, agreed with Millstein and stated, "For a long time, they were the only game in town … They were
able to demand prices and dictate display. But as other brands ate into their market, retailers could turn elsewhere or make their own
private label brands."
MARKETING STRATEGY
To boost its popularity with the younger market and to lure customers, Levi's chose to launch the $90 million image-building campaign
based on the strength of its brand. Levi's Fanoe was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle as saying, "The ads will be built around what the
Levi's brand stands for: originality, independence and Levi's as an American icon." The biggest and most expensive campaign instigated by
Levi's, "They Go On" included six television spots, five of which lasted 60 seconds and one 90 seconds. It debuted in August 1997 on
prime-time network television and during telecasts of National Football League games on Fox as well as on MTV. The spots were also shown
in movie theaters across the nation. The print and outdoor portions of the campaign began in October with print ads in magazines such as
Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. Levi's home page on the World Wide Web provided additional ad information, and the campaign
included bilingual spots in Spanish and English for viewers in the Los Angeles and Houston areas. Levi's expected 94 percent of its target
consumers to see the campaign an average of 15 times each.
CELEBRITY CAMEOS
Several of the spots in the Levi's "They Go On" campaign featured appearances by celebrities. Author Quentin Crisp
appeared as a patron in a nightclub, and musician Lenny Kravitz was the rock star stuck at a gas station's pay phone. The
bag boy in "Bag Boy Fantasy" was played by Brian Vaughan, the actor who had portrayed the young Brad Pitt character in
the film Seven Years in Tibet, and the riled agent of the rock star was played by Bodhi Elfman, son of Danny Elfman,
musician and member of the rock band Oingo Boingo.
The six television spots shared a loosely interwoven narrative. Common elements linked the spots, but the elements were often random,
and viewers had to pay close attention to notice the connections. As Amy Rosenthal, the senior marketing specialist at Levi's USA,
explained to the Dallas Morning News, "We call it dream logic … There's no beginning, middle or end, just a series of little vignettes. Nothing
much happens, but they are connected in interesting ways by interesting things." The strategy was similar to those adopted by competitors
Lee and Guess, both of which produced television spots that were like minifilms that told stories, albeit nebulous ones, designed to push an
image rather than a product. It was believed that this soft-sell approach would appeal to teenagers who had become jaded about pushy
advertising. In the Dallas Morning News James Twitchell, author of Adcult USA, commented on the Levi's campaign by remarking, "It's the
ultimate super-soft sell, so soft there's no sell at all … Advertising has become so omnipresent, the only way to cut through it is with
something that doesn't look like an advertisement."
Levi's hoped that the target consumer would be engaged by the spots and encouraged to view all of them. Unlike other episodic campaigns
that televised one spot at a time, Levi's chose to show the commercials in groups of two or three in an attempt to draw in the viewer and to
signify that the spots were indeed related. Andy Berkenfield, Foote Cone & Belding account manager and vice president, told the Dallas
Morning News, "You do worry with this sort of episodic storytelling that it will be confusing, so you try to make it pretty obvious, especially
early on."
The first spot, the 90-second "Impala Man," featured a man wearing a cowboy hat who drove a Chevrolet Impala filled with stuffed animals
to a diner. In the diner he talked to D.J. Marcus, a New York-bound disc jockey, and gave away a stuffed dinosaur. The following spot, "Car
Chase," starred a Kojak-obsessed cab driver employed by a plainclothes policeman to chase a thief making a getaway on a moped. The
cab driver engaged in a high-speed chase, with the nervous officer in the backseat. In the third spot, "Ice Cream Man," the disc jockey
from the first spot returned as a disc jockey in a trendy nightclub, an ice cream man would not hand over ice cream to young children
unless they correctly answered difficult trivia questions, and a rock musician spoke on a pay phone at a gas station. "Bag Boy Fantasy"
showed the agent of the rock star on a cellular phone in a grocery store while the bag boy daydreamed of being a rock star. "Test Drive,"
the fifth installment, included a girl who took a car on a test drive, with the dealer in the backseat making sales claims. She stopped to pick
up her boyfriend and then drove to a coffee shop. The final spot, "Car Wash," featured a goggles-clad man who drove an AMC Gremlin
through a car wash with the windows rolled down, thus washing the inside and outside of the car. As he exited the car wash, the Impala

from the first spot drove by.
A team of 40 engineers from NBC Digital Productions merged the six original spots with new commercials to create a drama series that
debuted on September 22, 1997. The drama appeared exclusively on NBC.com, which used "They Go On" to promote the network's new
Snap! website browser created by the technology publisher CNET. Returning characters such as D.J. Marcus and the Impala man were
featured along with the new characters Chloe and Zack. At certain arranged times the actors interacted with website visitors via a message
board.
It was revealed in the April 26, 1999, issue of Adweek (eastern edition) that both the online "They Go On" drama series and earlier spots
were the result of a new advertising agenda set in place by Gordon Shanks, the president of operations in the Americas for Levi's. In early
1997 Shanks had requested that Foote Cone & Belding make the campaign "reinforce Levi's brand values across all consumers in all
categories." In response, the agency's creative director Chuck McBride created a 30-second spot that spoofed the current baggy-pants
trend while simultaneously touting Levi's own baggy Wide Leg jeans. The zany commercial featured a young man being operated on by
dancing surgeons. Although representatives from Foote Cone & Belding believed the commercial would resonate well with younger
consumers, Shanks rejected it. As a result, much of the agency's talent left, and the remaining creatives released the more elusive "The
Go On" spots in August.
OUTCOME
When the campaign first aired, Levi's reported positive feedback regarding the "They Go On" campaign from young consumers, and it won
critical praise for its originality. The Los Angeles Times rated the campaign a three out of four for effectiveness, and the Orange County
Register scored it an A-for its concept. Bob Garfield, columnist and reviewer for Advertising Age, gave "They Go On" three out of four
stars.
Unfortunately for Levi's the praise was short-lived. The company posted a 4 percent sales decline in 1997. That same year Levi's
announced that it would close 11 U.S. factories and lay off nearly one-third of its workforce. Clothing-industry consultant Harry Bernard of
Colton Bernard, Inc., told the Columbian, "I think ['They Go On' is] probably the most unfocused ad campaign that they've ever had … I
think they've lost track of who and what they are." Other advertising analysts accused Levi's of specifically losing touch with its teenage
customers. John Flanagan of the youth-marketing consultancy Thermostat explained to Adweek (eastern edition) that Levi's "wasn't
monitoring the streets, they fell asleep."
In 1998 Levi's posted its worst sales loss since World War II. Furthermore, according to a study conducted by the retail-industry analysts
Tactical Retail Monitor, Levi's market share of U.S. jeans plummeted from 31 percent in 1990 to 16.9 percent in 1998. Levi's executives
partially blamed Foote Cone & Belding for their company's downturn. Agency representatives blamed Levi's Gordon Shanks for trying to
target such a wide demographic. In early 1998 Levi's ended its 68-year relationship with Foote Cone & Belding, but it continued using the
"They Go On" tagline until mid-1998.
FURTHER READING
Cuneo, Alice Z. "Insight into Brand Wins Levi's for TBWA Chiat/Day." Advertising Age, February 2, 1998, p. 3.
――――――. "Levi's Branding Blitz in Works." Advertising Age, March 31, 1997.
――――――. "Levi's Fights Back with Image Ads." Advertising Age, July 28, 1997.
Emert, Carol. "Levi's Battles to Stop Slide in Market Share." San Francisco Chronicle, June 25, 1997, p. B1.
Feuerstein, Adam, and Clifford Carlsen. "Levi Tries to Get Young People into Its Pants." San Francisco Business Times, April 14, 1997.
Garfield, Bob. "Levi's Heroes Vapid, but They Wear Well." Advertising Age, August 11, 1997, p. 29.
Gellene, Denise. "Levi Strauss Shoots for the Hip." Los Angeles Times, September 4, 1997, p. D4. Reviews the "They Go On" campaign.
Himelstein, Linda. "Levi's Is Hiking Up Its Pants." Business Week, December 1, 1997, p. 70.
Irvine, Martha. "Levi's Searching for a New Image." Columbian, November 6, 1997, p. D2.
Johnson, Greg. "Levi Strauss Is Trying to Give Its Product and Image a Better Fit." Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1997, p. D1.
Kelly, Jane Irene, and Michael McCarthy. "TBWA C/D to Levi." Adweek (eastern ed.), February 2, 1998, p. 5.
"Levi's Launches 'Funky' Ad Blitz." San Francisco Examiner, July 29, 1997, p. B1.
Maurstad, Tom. "Levi's Commercials Sell Soft and Cool." Dallas Morning News, October 19, 1997, p.1C.
Oberlag, Reginald. "NBC Continues TV/Internet Convergence with Snap! Alliance." Shoot, August 14, 1998, p. 22.
Outhier, Craig. "From Edgy to Ridiculous, TV Pitches Continue to Push the Envelope and Test Our Patience." Orange County Register,

October 26, 1997, p. F10.
Voight, Joan. "An American Icon Fades Away." Adweek (eastern ed.), April 26, 1999.
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