Industry Eye: Prospecting - Dockers' All-Channel Kick in the Pants
Spend $3 million on a Super Bowl ad and it better drive viewers to more efficient marketing channels. Dockers' "Wear the Pants" Super Bowl blitz drove consumers into every communication channel available.
Website: The Dockers ad capped 30 seconds of modern men marching through fields in their underwear — singing — with a simple, strong call to action: Go to the website for a chance to win free pants. Print and web ads containing Dockers' "Man"-ifesto similarly drove consumers to its site. Dockers.com's daily reach increased more than fivefold following the Super Bowl, according to website tracking company Compete.
Mobile: Viewers of the commercial could "Shazam" the ad. Shazam is an app that recognizes songs, and it responds to the pantsless men's marching song by taking users to a branded Dockers site.
Email: Dockers captured emails from everyone the campaign drove to its site, and follow-up emails came about a month later inviting them to join the "Pantsformation," which led to a video on Dockers' own website showing 12 looks one can create with Dockers khakis, contrasting them with a fellow it called "Mr. Man-child Pants" — he wore jeans, although the creative carefully avoids that word.
Social media: The Pantsformation email and Dockers website invited consumers to follow Dockers on Twitter and Facebook. Its Facebook page has 12,000 fans and a video, "An Emasculating Truth," about the fall of testosterone in American men. The next tab over shows another dose of Pantsformation and a link to Esquire picking Dockers soft khakis as the No. 1 must-have item for 2010. Dockers' @WearThePants Twitter handle similarly works to associate khakis with manliness and manly fashion, as well as drawing attention to khakis in the news and famous men wearing them. —Thorin McGee
