In 2020, Savage X Fenty wanted to promote its fashion show. A cultural moment that redefines what ‘sexy’ means for the next generation. But there’s one problem. We’re still living with this generation. Savage X Fenty Instagram posts get censored every day. Not because there’s anything wrong with them, but because some bigot somewhere doesn’t like seeing lingerie on different body types, skin tones, or sexual orientations. Even in 2020— the majority gets to control what “sexy” looks like. So how do you promote something that you know will be censored? You censor it first.

We hacked Instagram’s ‘sensitive content’ UX and put our campaign behind warnings of our own. Warnings to let people know that the show contains individuals that are too loud, too thicc, too unapologetic and too savage for instagram’s standards. Instead of being silenced by haters, we silenced their hate.

When Amazon asked us to hype Savage X Fenty's show on social we knew we were in for a challenge. While the brand champions diversity and inclusion of all body types, the trolls of the internet are quick to flag the content that strays from their narrow view of what's "beautiful".

We knew we needed to point out the absurdity of this censorship while flipping the mechanic on its head. The best way to attract eyeballs is to tell the internet they can't see something.

The first step was about getting attention by telling people they couldn't see it. The second was empowering people to play with the "rules of censorship" in their own posts. Leveraging the power of the collective voices of the internet to spread our message.

When something’s flagged as inappropriate on Instagram, it gets hidden behind a “Sensitive Content” warning. We took this warning into Photoshop and tweaked it, so that at first glance it looks like any other censorship. But when you look at it closer, you realize it’s actually a celebration of everything that the censors try to hide.

We didn’t have a huge media budget, and we couldn’t throw the typical promo party (thanks, pandemic). We knew that in order to fuel the message of one of today’s most meaningful fashion brands, we’d have to design for participation. We’d have to create a moment that people would opt into. So we create a suite of customizable social content for fans to use as a way to express their own #SavageNotSorry stories — and it worked.

The message just spread like wildfire. Celebrities like Normani, Paris Hilton, Irina Shayk, Rico Nasty, Nazanin and many more joined in. #SavageNotSorry was used over 10,000 times and had 15,000 comments within the first 5 days alone garnering $10M worth in free social media impressions and Savage X Fenty’s best fashion show yet.

Eventually “Savage Not Sorry” became so searched for that the brand turned it into its very own best selling lingerie line.