To bring awareness to the SSENSE kidswear department that initially launched in 2021, SSENSE conceived and executed a playful campaign video series featuring a team of Spelling Bee contestants challenged with the names of emerging and established brands from the Spring/Summer 2024 collections sold on SSENSE.com and the SSENSE mobile app. Brands included Thom Browne (can't forget that silent "e"), Collina Strada, Eckhaus Latta, Rick Owens, Marni, and more.
What ensued was a viral social media campaign that cut through the media noise with its unexpected approach to bridging the worlds of kids and designer fashion. The campaign took what would have been a traditional kidswear launch and brought it to a fever pitch in terms of buzz surrounding both the SSENSE brand, social media team and the new kidswear collection. When was the last time you saw a tot spell 'Margiela' correctly? Most adults would have probably struggled to do the same.
The campaign quite literally put brand names in people’s mouths – teaching viewers how to pronounce some tricky names correctly (is it Bur-berry or Beh-beh-ry?) was an added bonus along the way. A testament to the different ways in which kids can tug at our collective heartstrings, it really never is too early to start them young.
Against a stark white background, a petite blonde toddler shuffles over to a microphone placed perfectly center frame. Carrying a handbag larger than her torso, with bow clips in her hair and a pair of dusty purple baggy jeans dreamt up somewhere in a Y2K fever dream, she stops just short of the mic.
*Two taps* “Testing, testing?”
“Your word is ‘Collina Strada’”, reads the announcer. It’s only now that we are clued in to the fact that this must be a spelling bee of sorts.
But it’s not your average spelling bee. Welcome to the SSENSE Kidswear Spelling Bee.
In the age of mass media consumption, content is king. The everyday consumer has never been more tapped into the world of culture marketing, whether they realize it or not. With that comes a certain challenge for the actual marketers: how do you stand out from the pack without looking like you’re trying too hard or coming off as inauthentic? It’s a challenge that SSENSE took head on in its approach to launching its newest kidswear collection in spring 2024.
Kidswear has long offered a foundation for discovery and self-expression for little ones starting from an early age. SSENSE, acclaimed for its curated selection of styles and brands across its menswear, womenswear, and Everything Else™ departments, used that same POV to cultivate its imaginative designer kidswear assortment, originally launched in 2021. When it came time to bring the Spring/Summer 2024 kidswear launch to market, SSENSE sought to take a pop culture staple – the spelling bee – and inject it with a touch of virality to drum up buzz (no pun intended) and get the word out in a more left-of-center way. Of course, it helps that most people can’t resist the infectious spirit of kids to begin with.
Over a week in March 2024, SSENSE rolled out an eight-video campaign on socials, each featuring a kid – some big, some less big – participating in a solo spelling bee, assigned a word that they would have to spell correctly for the audience. What followed was a question not too dissimilar to ones that traditional spelling bee contestants often ask in their own competitions: “Can you please use it in a sentence?” or “What’s the country of origin?” ...you get the idea.
But instead of “gyascutus” and “dactylic”, these contestants were asked to spell “Rick Owens” and “Margiela”. By coincidence – or was it? – each contestant was wearing the brand they were asked to spell from head-to-toe. Spoiler alert: the little superstar nailed her attempt at ‘Collina Strada’.
Can you spell ‘auspicious’? Used in a sentence: The SSENSE Kidswear Spelling Bee campaign was an adorable, auspicious success.
When the dust had settled, it became clear that SSENSE had once again struck a nerve. Based on metrics alone, the campaign was widely shared on Instagram, organically approaching a cumulative 14 million views in the few days out of its release, and, according to Launchmetrics, in the campaign’s first four days alone it drove $352,000 in total media impact value via 16 posts across social media platforms resulting in +77 per cent year-over-year sales growth on Kidswear during the same period in 2023.
In actuality, the campaign was a continuation of the SSENSE ability to take something we all know and love – in this case, kids – add a splash of tongue-in-cheek humor, and hit the bullseye in terms of target audience and emotional impact. All while keeping in line with SSENSE’s clean, minimalist, and sleek aesthetic. Think spelling bee, if the spelling bee took place in an all-white, nondescript great beyond and the contestants wore Marni and Thom Browne.
On the surface, the business goal of the campaign was to bring awareness to the kidswear department. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll start to notice ulterior motives, including bringing to the forefront those more niche brands that also happened to create kidswear exclusively for SSENSE for the launch like Collina Strada and Eckhaus Latta. And yes, it doesn’t hurt that we all know how to spell ‘Margiela’ now; if a six-year old can do it, so can we.
