AMFI STUDENTS COLLABORATE WITH CONVERSE FOR THEIR SPRING 2020 CAMPAIGN

The last semester, looking back has been all about ‘sparking’ our progress to work within the creative industry. The first great leap was when our entry for the D&AD New Bloods was selected. And later, with our team partners Lukas and Maëva, we picked up a graphite pencil at the London awards ceremony. This first success of working with an industry brief gave us the confidence and experience to meet a real client and take on their challenge.

In April, the European Converse team welcomed the students assigned to this brand and shared the new campaign direction openly to launch the recycled Renew shoe. And the brand’s progress to becoming more sustainable. The hero campaign film by Wieden & Kennedy showcased a new direction for the brand to highlight female change-makers and support a series of grassroots projects and community creation. Our brief was to simultaneously link the brand’s own story of ‘spark progress’ through the Renew shoe to empowering teen females to share their stories, by creating and driving traffic to @converse-london.

Two months later, after the initial excitement of this fantastic opportunity from the brand, followed by the usual creative dips the come with working through real-life challenges, we had our solution. The class was invited back by the brand to the HQ to pitch our campaign proposals. It was both nerve-wracking and immensely rewarding to have your ideas and tactics taken seriously and critiqued by the marketing and brand team. They patiently listened to six proposals from the working duos and evaluated each on their merits, the strengths and weaknesses of bringing these ideas to market. Our second win this year was to have our proposal rewarded with a week-long mentorship at the brand HQ.

The mentorship took place in the last week of September; it was an agenda-packed introduction into the Brand Marketing function. We learned about their upcoming campaign for Spring 2020 and the different roles in the team. We even brainstormed together on new ideas – and had another chance to share our brief solution to the broader organization. For us, this marked the significant progress we have made in our student careers to being taken seriously as professionals!

The creative duo back in action!

In June our whole class worked on a strategy to launch their sustainable classic, the Renew Chuck.

We had an exclusive look at Converse’ Global SS20 Campaign and had the opportunity to work on it together with the team. In-between our busy schedule we got the task to come up with creative storytelling ideas for the SS20 campaign. Or to look into the analytics of their social media channels.

From each department we got a fun task to work on in between our schedule such as coming up with creative story telling ideas for the ss20 campaign or having a look into the analytics of their social media channels and analyzing it.

At the end of the week, the Converse team surprised us with a crazy shopping spree where they spoiled us with new shoes and goodies!

It was both super fun and a very insightful week. The team was extremely welcoming and generous with their time. We got to work on loads of interesting projects, even chat with Max Firth, the Brand Director and Creative Director Nick Parkinson. Every department listened to us and was open for all of our opinions and ideas, really making us feel part of the team. A special thank you to Marloes, Sara and Jill for creating and planning this learning experience and kick-starting our own careers. Watch this space!