Campaign Spotlight: 2024 Kidswear
Little kids and high fashion (typically) don’t mix — which partially explains the brilliance of Ssense’s 2024 kidswear campaign.
“When you combine worlds you don’t expect to see together, it creates excitement,” said Thom Bettridge, Ssense’s vp of creative and content, theorizing about the success of the project.
In spring 2024, to bring awareness to the luxury e-tailer’s kidswear offerings, Bettridge created a series of videos, each featuring a kid wearing fabulous fashions while spelling the name of their popular designer, spelling-bee-style. For example, upon being prompted with “Your word is Burberry” and receiving clarification on its country of origin, a little girl in head-to-toe Burberry plaid recites the letters forming the iconic British fashion brand’s name.
On Instagram, the videos were celebrated in comments and widely shared, including by featured brands Thom Browne, Eckhaus Latta and Collina Strada. According to Launchmetrics, in the first four days following the campaign’s release, its 16 dedicated posts across social media platforms drove $352,000 in media impact value. By mid-July, the Reels post featuring Thom Browne’s kidswear had alone been viewed 1.6 million times.
According to Bettridge, the campaign’s simplicity also contributed to the buzz surrounding it. “It wasn’t trying to say too many things at once,” he said.
While the results may have been “minimal and straightforward,” perfectly reflecting Ssense’s brand identity, the thought process behind them was decidedly sophisticated, incorporating learnings from Bettridge’s vast editorial background — prior to joining Ssense, he spent three years as Highsnobiety’s editor-in-chief.
Bettridge took inspiration from the “clear, direct and humorous approach to storytelling” found in fashion ads from the ’80s and ’90s, he said, calling the era’s Gap commercials and Oliviero Toscani-photographed United Colors of Benetton ads particularly influential. “Before it became niche, fashion advertising was more mass,” he said. ”And I wanted to do something that felt universal and fun.”
As with all of Bettridge’s recent work, the campaign was also informed by ideas from the “enormous pool of online creators,” as well as the prioritization of an “if you know, you know” element, and the goal of turning out “human, accessible and interesting” content that wasn’t shot on a phone. Regularly leading the online conversation, versus only joining in, is also a constant focus, as is spotlighting brand partners while holding true to Ssense’s DNA.
“You’ve got to bridge the gap between [reflecting] your brand identity and attracting attention,” he said. “You can get millions and millions of views on a video, but if it’s something anyone could have posted, it won’t have a substantial impact on your brand.”
The kidswear campaign marked Bettridge’s directorial debut. The role allowed him “to bring the idea from A to B very clearly,” he said, adding, “Oftentimes, a really exciting idea loses some of its magic as you make it.”
And, in the end, the project provided a template for subsequent Ssense campaigns. A similar casting approach, sense of humor and shooting style were used for the retailer’s bridalwear campaign in May, for example.
“We will continue to double down on storytelling as a source of marketing magic,” Bettridge said. “We’ve always invested a lot in storytelling, … and the success of the kidswear campaign just made us more confident in that approach.”
He added, “We’ve exited the ‘attention for attention’s sake’ era of content and are moving into a new era where content is becoming a marketing tool — not a novelty marketing tool, but a standard issue marketing tool. The sheer fact that you’re creating entertainment as a brand is now a given. Now, it’s about figuring out: How is this attention helping the brand, or driving sales, or creating a community of people who are brand believers?”
