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The Hamilton Perkins Collection
most premier product is a line of designer bags that are not only made from 100% recycled materials, but also lined with the vinyl from old billboards. Each bag is unique, eco-friendly, and serves an altruistic purpose by creating jobs at fair wages for the less fortunate in Haiti.
The Hamilton Perkins Collection [HPC] is a Certified B Corporation that manufactures designer clothing and accessories from recycled water bottles in Haiti. Among their
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My Role: Team Lead, Market Strategy, Cinematography / editing, graphic design
the HPC STORY
Looking out to the tarmac gives us a unique moment of inflection. For those few moments before takeoff, we become completely separated from where we came from, where we're going, and the expectations others set for us. During this moment of solidarity, the recent post-graduate student Hamilton Perkins looked out of his Airplane window to see an enormous pile of plastic water bottles forming a mountain along the Haitian shoreline. As an ambitious social entrepreneur, Hamilton turned his mind on how to solve the negative impact these pollutants have on our developing nations, and created an innovative new process to not only re-purpose these water bottles through recycling - but to up-cycle them into something marketable. Stepping off his flight in the US, Hamilton never gave up on that dream. Returning to Haiti, he created a manufacturing plant that provides fair-wages and healthy working conditions for all employees, and founded a Certified B Corporation - the Hamilton Perkins Collection, that manufactures designer products all from recycled materials.
Problem
As the environmental necessity for sustainable, upcycled products continues to grow, the market for these products is expected to grow dis-proportionately slower. For small to mid-size designers such as Hamilton Perkins with a reach of 30 retailers, an online-store, and a specialty store in Norfolk, VA; competing with non-sustainable brands who offer lower cost products makes it exceptionally difficult to penetrate the national market.
Opportunity
To create a series of multi-media advertising campaigns that educate the environmentally conscious of the value of HPC, and build brand recognition that bolsters sales for new customers. In addition, increasing the "gift" appeal of products may also serve as a secondary point of sale.
THE ASK
To create a series of 50 YouTube advertisements that would engage the existing audience, and inspire new interest in HPC as a content producer, as much a fashion designer. As opposed to creating a series of 50 videos that followed the rules of advertising, Hamilton's vision was to compose a series of creative campaigns that would reach his audience on a deeper level, and keep them interested in a manner similar to a blog, or podcast. To do so would require us to learn the interests of his separate consumer segments, and tailor content directly to them.
Approach
With with nearly zero experience in film and less than four months to complete the project - jumping in to begin shooting videos, learn editing software, and test outcomes was the first objective I set in tandem with our customer discovery. Within the first several weeks, we composed a number of pilot videos, and began refining a strategy for creating unique campaigns to effectively reach our multiple target audiences. Adjacent is a Gantt chart I composed for tracking our progress.
CUSTOMER Discovery
While learning proper film and editing techniques was imperative to our initial ask, we also found that thoroughly understanding our customers base would be of equal value if we were to produce content that would resonate with our audience, and reduce wasted time and energy on ineffective content. Adjacent is a value map I composed on our customers interests, and some of the most influential insights we gained from customer discovery are outlined below.
INSIGHT
Current Market
The average customer lies between 25-37, and has both the desire, and ability to spend more on up-cycled products (59% earning over $100K, and few below $70k). The desire to support social / environmental causes; however, does not outweigh price when making a final decision at the checkout counter.
Upcoming Market
Generation Z is ~80% more likely to make a purchase based on a products social / environmental impact; however, most have not reached financial maturity to begin making high-end purchases on designer products. Reaching this market would require incubating their loyalty to the brand over a long period of time.
UNTAPPED Markets
Both generations value purchasing up-cycled products for themselves; however, both subconsciously associate purchasing up-cycled for others as gifting "trash." Behavior in other countries, such as China, is uniquely reversed, and these products are seen as more novel and more desirable.
Carlton Mitchell, Nick Brown
PRINT AND STORE ADS
Finding the current customers interest in supporting socio-economic causes would not outweigh price when positioned against competitors, we identified hard and soft-sell video content may be enough to make conversions for this segment by itself. Essentially, this consumer may be enticed by - or even follow unique content in a manner similar to a podcast; however, their mind was set on a lean lifestyle that focused on saving money. With this insight we identified the opportunity to create an series of ads that would remind the consumer of the value Hamilton Perkins provides above its competitors when checking out. Through consumer research, we identified major retailers H&M, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, and Tommy Hilfiger - as opposed to major up-cycle designers, to be our main competitors. With this in mind, I created a friendly series of print and store ads that mimicked the aesthetic design of competitors while highlighting the HPC value propositions.
VIDEO Campaigns
With multiple targets and unique interests among each, we categorized our content by hard-sell and soft-sell techniques, male, female, and LGBTQ audiences, and age / maturity for purchase. With these parameters, we arrived at the outlined video campaign strategy (campaign targets and logic are explained more below).
Having limited time - and a lot to do - we divided ourselves into two person teams to alternate filming and anchoring. With the learning curve in filming / editing, this helped to keep film style consistent for each campaign and target market. Big thanks to my partner, Hui Zhai (above) for all the long nights of hard work shooting and editing together!
Soft Sell: "WHERE WILL YOU GO WITH HPC?"
Among the top interests of both our older and younger audiences was travel. To address this interest, we created a series of "soft sell" videos which featured the HPC product in a travel, or fluid environment. This allowed us to present the brand quickly, and in a financially practical manner for YouTube advertising.
Making the "7th
Touch Point"
Having 6 points of existing contact (including magazines, email, social media, in-store ads, and more) we set out to make a series of short videos which accentuate the Hamilton Perkins name. This enabled us to quickly make our final touch point (per the rule of 7 in marketing) through short YouTube advertisements at an affordable rate. In creating this series, we used our network to have the HPC name spoken around the world!
Vice Style Stories: "Hpc EXPLORES"
In addition to having an interest in travel, we found both target demographics to have a significant interest in adventure, outdoor recreation, and exploring new topics in philanthropy. With the objective of generating a subscription content channel, we developed a series of 15 'VICE' style stories that explored new places, innovative projects, and interesting people with regular updates. These took us on broad set of adventures where we explored the history of abandoned train tunnels from the civil war, met with NFL players, up-and-coming artists, and unique events across the state. This became our most popular series among our male audiences.
"What's In Your Bag?"
For the less-developed, female target, we identified an higher likelihood to make purchases based on the products appearance than we did within our male market. With this insight, we developed a series of advertisements that asked individuals "What;s in your bag?" Staged to look like off-the cuff street interviews, these allowed us to focus heavily on the unique, and highly attractive interior design of the bags (lined with vinyl from recycled billboards), without creating a hard-sell. This became our most popular among female audiences.
Hui Zhai and Vernon Davis, Washington Redskins
THE Hard Sell "Getting to Know HPC"
In addition to the soft-sell and story-telling that was included in our ask, we also found the greater public neither knew, or would take the time to investigate the impact and purpose behind the brand. To demonstrate the value of the brand, we created a small series of hard-sell videos to demonstrate purpose and impact.
Creative & Experimental
Our final category focused on exploratory content that we could be used to test aesthetic, and audience interest in future video series. In addition to videos, we created a series of static advertising campaigns for testing with broad audiences.
ALTERNATIVE MARKETING
In addition to focusing on our video content, we were also encouraged to freely ideate on other methods of strategic / creative marketing that may not have been identified. Though many strategies were explored and prototyped, perhaps my favorite two were our rogue, and outdoor advertising approach. Rouge advertising, can actually be a very effective technique for getting users to engage with your brand without feeling like their being advertised too. For example, a restaurant chain may create a game that everyone loves to play without knowing it was created as an advertisement. To do this at local level, we created a competition for about 'Your Vision for HPC' at VCU, and took submissions which we judged and created high-fidelity prototypes of for winners. This both provided value to those who enjoyed the competitive aspect of it, while spreading the HPC name at the same time.
Alternative Advertising Examples
SECOND LINE
Above is a clip from an Instagram campaign by Carlton Mitchel aimed at incubating brand awareness among Generation Z prior to reaching financial maturity.
Above are mock-ups of a campaign to target financially mature consumers by Twitter. Proposed by Briana Brew, this campaign sought to increase brand interaction by asking followers to vote on new products, as well as build new awareness of HPC by contracting unique materials to existing name brands.
This proposal included manufacturing a line of lower cost up-cycled items to allow younger consumers access. Above are the items we found to have the greatest potential for low-cost production and consumer purchase.
NON-TRADITIONAL Outdoor MARKETING
Seeking to accentuate the use of billboard vinyl in HPC products, our mind initially went to creating outdoor ads by removing a silhouette of the HPC logo from billboards before they were taken down. Finding that cost would outweigh returns in the locations our target market frequented, we set our minds on identifying more non-traditional outdoor marketing opportunities. Among the most unique insights we found was that recycling trucks had one of the lowest costs-per-impression [CPI] of all outdoor advertisements, (generating thousands of impressions for only pennies), and had one of the highest capabilities to generating large-scale unique impressions due to their travel throughout the day.
Adobe Illustrator - Nick Brown
While proposing the use of advertisements on the side of a garbage-truck is something I'd probably never do in other circumstances, it seemed uncanny how well the mission of making a 7th point of contact (meaning the user just needs to see your brand one additional time - and not necessarily interact with it) at a large scale seemed to synchronize with the context of the product. Though it likely wouldn't resonate in US markets where individuals prefer not to associate their products with trash, using this strategy in a place such as China where the mentality is reversed could be an incredibly cost-effective way to get millions of impressions while building the novelty value of the brand.
FINAL OBJECTIVE
Lower-cost hat mock-ups for Gen-Z.
The Hamilton Perkins Magazine
After four months of learning video, customer discovery, developing advertising campaigns, and making agile adjustments, our final ask for this project was to develop a 50 page publication on our work. This document was intended to explain the Hamilton Perkins brand, market for up-cycled materials, and process we used for determining a competitive marketing strategy. Rather than producing one in a standard, scholarly format, I put my mind to designing it in a way that looked like a magazine that would appeal to the audiences we were trying to capture. Below are a few pages I designed for the book (free of copy-writing). Note: All media above this point [excluding audio tracks] are 100% original. The only exceptions below are images of Earth and Haiti.
PAGE SAMPLES
BIG THANKS TO MY INCREDIBLE TEAM-MEMBERS, MENTORS, AND PARTNERS ON THIS PROJECT!