It is early 2018, and the brand DKNY (Donna Karan New York) finds itself at once in a familiar yet uniquely new position. The familiar: it is time to create the campaign to communicate & sell the apparel & accessories that make up the Fall 2018 DKNY line. However, the brand also finds itself just over one year of ownership by a new parent company who has spent the last year repositioning the brand to a more democratic price point aimed at reaching a larger consumer base worldwide.

Yet the brief the brand’s communication leadership feels is upon it is that differentiation is the lifeblood in today’s overflowing marketplace of brands & product – and so the brand needs to more clearly than ever communicate its core values like diversity, individuality, hustle – in an attention-grabbing way. And one that can resonate globally.

In briefing the creative agency partner, the brand continually reiterated that its core DNA points of diversity, individuality, hustle, are all shared with – and stem from – the brand’s New York City home of 30 years. The creative concepting dialogues continued hitting on what being a New Yorker stands for; what makes someone a New Yorker; can anyone sharing the values of celebrating individuality & acceptance be an honorary New Yorker? The phrase “I am a New Yorker” morphed into “I AM DKNY” – an agreeably more accessible tagline for a brand with global distribution. But what does it mean to be DKNY? This led to the concept of people being made up of countless different facets that make them “them.” An equation unique to each individual. All totaling up to make them 100% themselves. And to be 100% yourself, is 100% what DKNY is about. That’s 100% DKNY.

With the “100% DKNY” campaign concept, the brand & creative agency were in actuality creating a platform for dialogue between brand & consumer. And further: a platform for consumer to self-promote and receive validation from the brand. While the campaign creative visuals introduced viewers to a concept (tallying of unique personality traits up to 100%) – the heart of the PR strategy lie in the next phase: the call to action to fans to self-promote – to proudly proclaim what makes them 100% “them” – sharing that either lightly via the fill-in-blank form on social media, or on a t-shirt or tote bag for those more invested in the campaign. The strategy of gifting upward of 500 custom made shirts to key opinion leaders, then not until later rolling out the opportunity for fans & customers to make their own custom items, drove an engaged audience waiting for their chance.

With “100% DKNY” the brand & creative agency found a winning concept in numerous senses.

In the most basic visual sense, it offered eye-catching executions in the digital creative to play with numbers & tallying – engaging visuals counting up-to or down-from the number 100, catching eyes from smart phones, to laptops, to Times Square billboards.

In a more action-oriented sense, the creative assets essentially introduced viewers to a concept: tallying (the campaign talents’) unique personality traits up to 100%, for the brand to then call fans to action in filling in their own percentages totaling 100 in blank forms to then be shared out to their own social media networks using #IAMDKNY to be potentially #regrammed by @dkny – which proved an enticing proposition in the current culture of self-promotion that social media helped usher in.

Then finally, the concept extended to the sale of an actual product – perhaps the most democratic & accessible of products: the classic white t-shirt – this now offering even further indulgence in the “15 minutes of fame” culture today, and only further enhanced by the item delivering in a large DKNY pizza box – perfect for #unboxing content. A limited-edition product, driven with the urgency of a limited-time opportunity to purchase from a 2-week-only ‘digital pop-up shop’ in the shopping-filled weeks leading into the December holidays, with an added motivator of profits being donated to charity.

The results have been compelling on all fronts. From the original brief for an awareness and affinity-driving branding campaign, there are myriad metrics that speak to successful achievement – from the brand gaining 130,000 new Instagram followers in the first month of launch (2018 montly fan growth averaged <30,000), to DKNY’s exclusive retailer partner (in US), Macy’s seeing a 247% increase year-over-year in on-site searches for ‘dkny’ in the first two months of campaign launch. And finally in the season’s selling contributing to the new parent company reporting record profits for the fiscal year.

Culturally, the brand hadn’t a campaign in recent memory that caught the collective conscience like #IAMDKNY – as evidenced by the hundreds of (unpaid) celebrities, influencers & bold-faced names who posted on social media as they received 100% DKNY t-shirts, customized with percentages crafted just for them, delivered in what else but a branded pizza box.