D&AD - The British Fashion Invasion

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D&AD Student Awards 2013

Name - Charlie Barber
Brief - Ted Baker
Advertising
Take Ted Baker travelling.
Introduce Ted Baker to a country of your choice.

Creative Challenge - Ted Baker is continuing its plan for global growth, with new locations opening in China, Japan, the USA and the Middle East – each time taking a little bit of Britain with them. When opening a new location in another country, it’s not easy for a brand like Ted to translate its unique cultural flavour. It’s your job to bring its British sense of humour and unique approach to fashion to another country – which country is up to you. Your campaign will need to activate potential shoppers to visit Ted Baker stores and Ted Baker online; interact with the brand; and most importantly to shop and share.

Chosen Country - Portugal
The Concept - Portugal was chosen for this brief due to the strong relations between Britain and Portugal, maintaining the World’s oldest alliance, lasting so far for 640 years. Starting with this idea the concept evolved into ‘The British Fashion Invasion’, the idea being that Portugal is one of the few remaining nations Britain has not been at war with, so it’s about time Britain invaded Portugal, with their fashion. I intended for there to be a slight sense of self-deprecation here, basically Britain mocking itself for historically being an aggressive nation, having invaded the vast majority of all other countries at least once.

Visual Language

Teaser Campaign - Stickers

The idea of having a teaser advertising campaign before the main one was inspired by invasion warning leaflets, which, in times of war, are dropped by an invading nation into cities they are about to attack to warn the civilians, so they have time to flee the city. This teaser campaign was designed as a piece of guerrilla marketing, all the more relevant due to Portugal and Spain’s use of guerrilla warfare during The Peninsular War of 1808-1814, with the word guerrilla actually being Spanish for ‘Little War’. I kept the design of these stickers very simple, intentionally not giving away too much information or even including the Ted Baker logo in the designs, with the hope that people would be intrigued as to what they’re about and would discuss it among themselves before the main campaign came out.

Teaser Campaign - Posters

These posters form the second half of the teaser campaign, maintaining a similar design to the stickers, with only a limited amount of information about what’s to come, such as the dates of the alliance between Britain and Portugal (1373-2013), and the coat of arms of England (left) and Portugal (right). The idea behind these posters was that on their own the design wouldn’t seem to make a lot of sense, but multiple posters would be placed next to each other on a wall, where the shapes at the sides would link up to form a heart shape, which would be broken down the middle by the gap between the posters, representing the end of the alliance and friendship between Britain and Portugal.

Main Campaign - Posters 1

Here are the first two poster designs which form part of the main advertising campaign. As you can see, the detailed, colourful designs contrast with the simple, black and white teaser posters, but still share some of the same visual language elements, such as the typefaces, shapes, and imagery of the English and Portuguese Coat of Arms and the stylised English lion.
Since the theme of this campaign was very much invasion, these posters contain imagery representing this, starting with the background images of soldiers parachuting in and a beach, representing a military beach landing. Next we have images of British fighter jets, the Harrier Jump Jet and the Eurofighter Typhoon. Lastly I decided to place the iconic British Brodie Helmet onto the fashion models, so they appeared to be the ‘troops’ who are invading. I intentionally used imagery of jets and helmets from different eras to represent how Britain has been invading other countries throughout history.

Main Campaign - Posters 2

These next two posters are very similar to the previous two, they share the same background, but instead of including the imagery of fashion models and jets, I decided to place similar designs to the teaser campaign stickers in the middle of the poster. This was intended to create some variation in the campaign to make it more interesting, but at the same time of course maintaining the same visual language.
Another theme of this campaign is symmetry, as you can see many of the elements in these two posters and the previous two are centre-aligned, and the background imagery of the parachute drop and beach have been mirrored.

Main Campaign - Banners

For the last part of the campaign I designed large-format banners which would be displayed in clothing shop windows. The design of these was very similar to the posters, with the two designs containing photos of fashion models basically being simplified versions of the first two posters. The other two banners are slightly different, again I incorporated the same designs as the stickers, but altered them by changing the colour scheme to that of the other two banners. Also with these two I included imagery of the Eurofighter Typhoon and a landing craft.

Designs in the Environment