The brief was to create a narrative around the second The North Face x Gucci collection using the same ‘Eccentric Exploration’ strategy we defined with the first collection - aimed at a young culturally-astute Gen Z audience. For the first chapter of the collaboration last year, we called upon birdwatching collective, Flock Together, to bring the pieces to life in a unique and unexpected way. This time it’s the wonderful world of train travel with TikTok sensation, Francis Bourgeois. With these collections, Gucci comes to us to attach a narrative and context; allowing audiences to buy into a story rather than just a product or another collaboration between two brands.

Francis proves that trains are a catalyst for great adventure with his infectious energy, and we wanted to build on that for this campaign. It’s about showing alternative, eccentric ways to enjoy the outdoors. In this case taking a train into the mountains clad in brightly coloured The North Face x Gucci clothing.

We leveraged Francis’ eccentric persona, high passion and Gen-z following to create a narrative with the product at the centre. Creatively we wanted him to show up in ways his audience and community hadn’t seen before - in a more cinematic and filmic narrative - in addition to his native TikTok style capture. The creative was also about taking a highly-relevant but approachable, authentic and humorous persona such as Francis to disrupt the sometimes inaccessible nature of luxury-fashion, creating a campaign that was tongue-in-cheek, raw in its nature and didn’t take itself too seriously.

The umbrella strategy was ‘Eccentric Exploration’ which stemmed from the eccentricity found within Gucci’s brand values and exploration from The North Face’s performance outdoor products. To create heat, engagement and excitement around this second capsule collection from the two brands we harnessed the power of the social media influencer Francis Bourgeois. Noticing his strong online presence and community, we placed him at the nucleus of this digital first campaign to generate engagement from a style-savvy Gen-Z audience. We made sure to create TikTok specific content and social-forward short length clips encapsulated the narrative of the larger hero piece.

For this The North Face x Gucci campaign we needed to reach two different target audiences — Gen Z and Millenials. In order to succeed at this we realised we had to carry out cross-platform social activations which manifested in a mix of Instagram feed posts with the campaign video in the carousel, as well as stories and a TikTok.

On launch day we posted to Instagram, highsnobiety.com and TikTok for maximum engagement and effect, boosting our posts over the following few days and continuing to post on our other verticals the week after, meaning that the campaign was visible and on timelines for a consistent period.

Highsnobiety surpassed its engagement goals by 807% and our impression target by 35%.

Total impressions: ?6 Million (VS Estimated 4,5M?)

Total Engagements: ?261K (VS Estimated 29K)

IG Story

+366%Above IG story engagement forecast (The content got our audience excited, making them react and engage noticeably above average)

IG Feed

X10 Above IG main engagement forecast (The content got our audience very excited, making it one of the strongest posts ever)

736k Organic Feed Impressions generated -18% of following

IG Reels & TikTok Performance

1,5M Video Impressions generated with IG Reels/ Tik Tok amplification?

.Com editorial feature

Page views:? 72k (vs 4k benchmark)

The social community showed their adoration for the campaign through ugc fan art, tiktok responses, bootleg merch and more!