Challenge #1: Carhartt has been making workwear since 1889, but just in the past decade, it’s exploded in popularity. Now that Carhart is worn by celebs, politicians, and fashion bloggers, some assume the brand has sold out - becoming a trendy lifestyle brand that caters to hipsters. This couldn’t be further from the truth, so we wanted to show that Carhartt still works for the workers.
Challenge #2: America’s skilled trades workforce skews heavily toward older generations, with almost half over 45. As more Boomers retire from the trades, there aren’t enough younger workers stepping in to replace them. For decades, blue-collar careers have been stigmatized as a “vocational consolation prize,” as Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs described it. This “trades gap” is a problem for the nation (contributing to the rising cost of housing, infrastructure, and manufacturing) - yet it’s also an amazing opportunity with solid pay, job security, and the satisfaction of making an impact. We aimed to reframe trades work as an essential, exciting, and meaningful career.
Challenge #3: Most workwear brand spots follow the same formula: a montage of work scenes, with a voiceover about hard work, grit, and pride. They all feel the same - it’s more of a moodboard than a real story. You don’t learn who these people are, what they’re working on, what impact it has on the world, or what it means to them. Instead of just showing hard work, we decided to show why this work matters in the lives of our consumers.
Carhartt sought memorable creative that could break through the clutter and make the brand more relevant in culture. We realized Carhartt is already everywhere in culture: Behind the scenes of almost anything, you’ll find hardworking people getting their hands dirty to make it happen. We connected hard work to audience passion points (sports, music/tv, and food) through three short documentaries about the workers who make your favorite things possible.
For sports fans, we documented the construction of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. We interviewed Thurman Thomas (a legendary Buffalo Bills running back who now runs a construction company working on the new stadium) and captured the excitement of his employees - life-long Bills fans who are installing the seats that they (and the whole Bills Mafia) will cheer from for decades to come.
For country music fans, we followed the crew of The Road, a new music competition show that takes place on a real national tour as country musicians compete to open for the headliner, Keith Urban. It’s executive produced by Taylor Sheridan and Blake Shelton, but we spotlighted the team that physically makes the show - the riggers, electricians, roadies, and cameramen.
Lastly, we celebrated the people who make our food possible and tapped into an emotional cultural tentpole by profiling the farmers behind iconic Thanksgiving foods: turkey, cranberries, and sweet potatoes. These stories told emotional narratives centered on multi-generational farm families.
Through these stories, we illustrated how everything around you is made possible by hardworking people in Carhartt.
ASSETS: We made :30s and 5 minute docs for each of our three story pillars (The Stadium, The Road, and Gatherings), plus a :30s anthem with all three. 7x :30s vignettes about the crew of The Road ran within the show and as bonus content on Paramount Plus. All of the :30s served as trailers that drove to the full-length docs.
OVERALL: The campaign drove +20% YoY lift in brand demand (searches for Carhartt). We met or exceeded every KPI across every domain.
MEDIA: Media buys strategically aligned with high-profile tentpole moments - e.g. the Stadium spots ran in football games across multiple platforms. Paid surpassed impression and reached goals, with 465mm impressions. Brand lift studies showed +3 awareness lift on CTV and +2 purchase intent lift on Meta.
PR: 98 earned placements generated 231mm PR impressions, including mainstream news like Forbes and Newsweek, sports like NBC Sports, Sports Illustrated, SBNation, and Bleacher Report, and trades-focused industry publications like Farms.com.
O&O: Organic social earned nearly 4m views via 69 posts across Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn. People appreciated that we shone a spotlight on the workers behind the scenes, with comments like “Thank you for sharing these amazing stories from behind the scenes. This is so important!” And “Finally a Carhartt video for my trade! ✊ ”
SITE: 125k people visited our Join the Trades landing page, which featured our docs and info on trades careers. 97% were new visitors who’ve never been to the Carhartt site before.
