It’s no secret that young people love music. Over 55% of Levi’s® customers listen to their favourite tunes online and Levi’s® has a long-nurtured association with the music industry. But we needed a new way to leverage the brand’s connection.

We uncovered a worrying, long-term trend of massive budget cuts to arts funding; music education, facilities, and live music venues have all been the victims of this cash squeeze. In the UK alone, over 50% of all music venues have closed in the last 10 years. This was having devastating consequences for young people in their local communities.

There lay our opportunity – for Levi’s® to make a difference in this long-neglected space and reassert itself as a brand for them.

Across the UK, Spain, France and Germany, we funded and totally refurbed a music studio in each country to create a space for communities to develop their musical aspirations.

To announce the opening of the studios, we recruited local students with raw musical talent to take part in a 2-week music acceleration programme in these new spaces, culminating in a one-off showcase performance in each city.

As part of the partnerships, we sourced award-winning music artists - Skepta, Milky Chance, Everything Everything, Mist, Hyphen Hyphen and Rosalia to deliver hands-on mentoring to the students.

We developed a series of short and long-form videos. These pieces of content aimed to educate and inspire others to get involved.

We promoted the content on Social platforms to give young people the opportunity to see and share our story. Digital video platforms delivered our content in relevant context.

Our campaign reached 84% of 18-34 adults. This huge reach was achieved by using Social analytics to understand how our content was being engaged with to then create a real-time audience segmentation, allowing us to continually identify and create new audience segments to deliver our message to.

The Levi’s® Music Project has played a pivotal part in Levi’s achieving double digit growth (YoY) in 2017 (+20%)

Levi’s® became a $1bn business in Europe for the first time in its history. The equivalent to over 10 million pairs of jeans.

Beyond the huge reach of the campaign, through our brand equity tracker we continued to be category leading for important brand metrics such as “For someone like me”, “Socially responsible” and “Authentic” – with the Levi’s® Music Project being the key driver of these.

Massive budget cuts to arts funding were having a devastating effect on young people in their local communities. We took the Levi’s® Music Project to cities around Europe to create new opportunities.

By funding and refurbing a music studio in each city, our campaign created a space for communities to develop their musical aspirations. We invited local students to take part in a 2-week music acceleration programme in the new spaces, culminating in a one-off showcase performance in each city. A series of videos told the story of the project, reaching 84% of 18-34 adults.

This Levi’s® Music Project seeks to inspire and empower the next generation of artists, musicians and community leaders by:

• Providing access to new music education and technology resources

• Inspiring young people through music education, mentorship or leadership

• Putting music and technology at the centre of the experience

Our strategy was simple:

1. Partner with community groups and media partners, to create authentic and meaningful activations around Europe that could live beyond the campaign period - leaving a long-term legacy for the young people of each city

2. Partner with music artists local to each city to act as mentors for each programme

3. Tell the story of the Levi’s® Music Project to millions of young people to inspire beyond those able to attend the experience.

In the 90’s, Levi’s were one of the hottest brands on the planet, where young people would wait expectantly for the next piece of iconic advertising. Their marketing could put bands at number one in the singles chart and sell a whole pile of denim.

Fast forward 20 years and the world of denim is a very different place; the number of brands has exploded, and Levi’s have been caught in the middle between the low cost, fast fashion of the high street, and the proliferation of designer names in high-end boutiques.

Our challenge was to drive the desirability of Levi’s amongst youth once more, by placing them firmly back at the heart of culture. We looked towards where Levi’s® heritage lay, within music but we needed to create something that would be authentic and different during a time when music activations are being created by many of Levi’s® competitors.