CLARKS Back To School
Playmaker Films sent one of the world’s greatest footballers Back to School for a day to promote Clarks’ range of school shoes.
AGENCY
Playmaker Films
CLIENT
Clarks
BACKGROUND
Clarks is a national institution in children’s shoes. The brand’s annual Back to School campaign is a call-to-arms for parents around the UK: a reminder to measure up their loved one in stylish, sturdy shoes for the new term. In autumn 2023, the brand set out to create a Back to School brand awareness campaign on Social media, leveraging its media partnership with footballer Raheem Sterling.
“I’ve been wearing Clarks since I was a kid. I loved my Wallabees. I’d sell slushies in the school playground at breaktime and save up the money to eventually buy a new pair. They’re not just any shoes to me, they are part of my roots. Having the chance to co-design a collection with Clarks means a lot to me.” – Raheem Sterling
OBJECTIVES
Playmaker Films was tasked with creating a supporting TikTok campaign to win the attention, consideration and affection of Millennial parents - whose children are likely to be commencing a new primary school year in September 2023. The brief was to create something playful and humorous to live on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube, with an authentic, organic feel and bundles of ‘old school’ nostalgia inspired by kids being kids. As part of the campaign, Clarks wanted to expose its new ‘Goal’ kids shoe to prospective customers.
STRATEGY
This campaign was primarily about driving mental availability and brand salience to parents at the critical moment for the school uniform purchasing calendar. This campaign needed to grab the attention of millennial parents and inspire them to share it with peers.
A 2022 Oracle study found that, particularly since the pandemic years, relatable humour from brands is considered at a premium by UK consumers. About 80% of consumers would buy again from a brand that embraced humour, and 80% would also be more likely to recommend the brand to others.
Comedy done well drives engagement and reach, especially when it’s based around a known, shared truth. For that reason, authenticity was key to Playmaker’s construction of the campaign. Each scenario was based on rigorous research around the most familiar, meme-worthy primary school scenarios, with relatable events and ‘recognisable’ characters. All children featured in the campaign were not actors but real schoolchildren, from the same school, which offered a natural warmth and camaraderie. Similarly, lead ‘Teacher’ cast members were cast from actual real-life teachers, to add richness and authenticity to interactions between the generations on screen.
Stylistically, Playmaker opted for a comedic style popular with millennial audiences: a dry, stilted comedy of reactions, fuelled by numbing awkwardness and bumbling, try-hard authority figures, echoing the style of early 2000-2010s comedy classics like People Just do Nothing and This Country. A mockumentary style with first-person narration cues offered a natural platform for straight-faced surprises and misunderstandings, founded on understated, self-mocking performances.
The videos followed Raheem Sterling as he takes a trip back to school, encountering a series of different scenarios - from music and PE, to breaktime and the classic ‘school photo day’. The comedic twist being that, where Raheem assumed he’d be the most popular guy on campus, he soon finds out that kids can be rather difficult to please…
MEDIA
VIDEO
The campaign played out primarily on TikTok and Instagram Reels, led by one 60-second composite edit and five 30-second shorts covering different scenarios from Raheem’s day back at school. There is also an extended five-minute ‘director’s cut’ version, to play out on Instagram.
· Raheem Sterling goes Back To School - 1x Feature Length Master Cut, 1x 60s Composite Cut, 5x 30s TikTok Shorts (Back to School, Photo Day, Classroom, PE Lesson & Breaktime)
PRESS & IN STORE
The campaign was supplemented by a selection of stills for Press and In Store environments. These helped drive mental availability at the point of purchase, driving customers into stores and encouraging them to try on the new ‘Goal’ shoe.
RESULTS
Nb. At the time of the awards deadline, Sales data was only currently available for the first week after launch.
· The campaign posts achieved over 7m views on Raheem Sterling’s personal Social media channels, and prompted 894,000 engagements – an astonishing overall post engagement rate of 12.6%
· Age profile of those reached with Raheem’s posts was between 83-86% 18-34s
· The videos were also picked up and shared by humour and sports across TikTok, Instagram and Twitter, driving another 20,530,700 campaign views to date!
· 165% Sales uplift during the campaign launch week (w/c 31st July).
· The ‘Goal’ styles (Lead campaign styles) are the best performing in the Clarks range
· The Goal Style K (one of the lead product styles featured in the campaign) broke into the Top 10 Kids bestsellers online (usually dominated by continuation lines in School), lifting +169% in pairs sold during campaign launch week. It continued to lift seeing a further +14% increase in the second week.
