Last year, we co-created and launched a new category of clothing for people with disabilities. Our partnership with the Tommy Hilfiger Adaptive team challenged the fashion industry and changed lives. We made a major improvement on inclusive shopping. And we created a fully inclusive campaign to launch it all.

When someone says “Tommy Hilfiger,” most people think of two things: navy blue and the 1990s. Since then, the brand has struggled to regain a role in the cultural conversation, despite a reputation for democratizing fashion.

In 2018, we saw a chance to change things. Our clients, a scrappy group of marketers devoted to new initiatives asked us a deceptively simple question: How might they bring more people with disabilities into the franchise?

Once we ‘adapted’ the clothes, so people could wear them, we’d need to develop a campaign to build awareness and demand. For the one-in-five Americans who have been virtually ignored by the fashion industry, this was crucial.

While most brands choose to develop inclusive product design OR use inclusive representation in advertising, we’d do both. Using the principles of inclusive design, we brought people with disabilities into the entire process – from innovation to communication and beyond.

Our mission to develop the most inclusive campaign in history started with James Rath, our (legally blind) director, and a crew who brought personal experience with disability to the shoot. Our talent needed to represent people with varying disabilities, but we avoided casting by disability, instead working through organizations like dance companies and surf therapists.

Then we threw out the script, literally - realizing nothing we wrote would ever speak about self-expression better than they could.

Unlike most advertising, all our content is totally accessible via closed captioning and audio descriptions. Considering that many PWDs shop primarily online, we developed a best-in-class site experience to reduce risk and add delight. No detail was overlooked, from specially trained customer service to resealable packaging for easy delivery and returns.

To make the process even more seamless, we’re now developing the first Alexa skill that helps based on dressing challenge.

The phrase “Nothing for us without us” was our mantra. If we were to do anything for this underserved community, we’d have to work with them continuously.

We built a proprietary feedback loop, empowering hundreds of people with disabilities (PWDs) to share their experiences of getting dressed. By year end, we engaged 1500 people, in-person and online. Our digital platform was there to discuss product, design, shopping, advertising and to build community.

We discovered that by including more people, our efforts became more innovative.

But we weren’t just inventing, we were challenging assumptions within the fashion industry.

It’s why we began referring to our adaptations as innovations.

It’s why our campaign needed to be fully inclusive, not just on screen, but behind the scenes.

And it’s why we believe that inclusivity, not exclusivity, makes brands stronger.

Fall '18 Campaign

By hiring a visually-impaired director with a cast and crew made up of people in the disability community, the empathy one feels on the screen comes naturally from behind the scenes.

It was a clean, authentic and beautiful look, inspired by fashion but dedicated to telling a deeper story. We used the Tommy typography to express the energy and passion of this storied fashion brand, presenting the Tommy Adaptive line in the same way we would present any Tommy product.

We used all key elements from the Tommy brand, bringing the positive energy in our work to a deeper story about people who wear Tommy Adaptive, and why the clothes are life-changing. Our copy is either based on feedback in research or actual words of the talent. We wanted their voices to come through, based on the idea that this community should tell its own story.

The feedback loop we built had tremendous impact at every step in the marketing funnel:

? Seven new clothing innovations, over $1M sales.

? 709M press impressions, 20.3M social impressions to date, 2x industry average click through rates.

• 44% of Adaptive customers cross-shopping (buying both adaptive and non-adaptive items).

• Increased distribution beyond Tommy.com with Macy’s and Amazon.

• The campaign was a commercial success among people with disabilities.

• One-third of calls to customer service were to say, “Thank you.”

A recent quant study revealed that two-thirds of non-disabled consumers who saw our work took action within three days of exposure - telling friends, visiting the site, and/or buying clothes.

Tommy Hilfiger has always been driven by optimism and the democratization of fashion. We’ve now found a new purpose for those values, strengthening our commitment to self-expression for all.