Making Bootleg Good
2019 / Nowadays Creative
For this project, I touched none of the creative but I created the strategy. To this day it’s one of my only strictly-strategy projects.
20 years ago PUMA was a big player in the basketball space. 20 years of Walt “Clyde” Frazier* later, they were not such a player on the hoops scene. So, Nowadays brought we on to develop a new strategic platform for PUMA Hoops.
I knew PUMA couldn’t play the same game as the Nike’s and Adidas’ of the world, so I went after what they couldn’t. At a time when kids where embracing DIY in every aspect of their life, we handed just about every element of the brand over to them with our “Give Them the Keys.”
*No disrespect to Mr. Frazier, who’s done more for the Knicks than almost anyone.
Give them the Keys gave fans a diverse toolkit of lo-fi collage, hand drawn logos, meme-culture, bootleg design and an ever changing PUMA image. While other brands had rigid guidelines, we positioned PUMA as they least precious, most accessible hoops brand around.
And people noticed.
If you liked this work,
you might also like the people who worked on it.
Stefan Knecht, Creative Direction
Kristen Selasky, Account Direction
And you might like
these projects:
Attack!
What the founders of Nowadays and I did back when we were a team at Wieden + Kennedy.
The New York Times Experience
Another platform that was all about cultural authenticity, but for a very different culture.
Shut Up, We’re Blogging
W+K NY used to have a blog, and I used to run it.