Kenneth Cole - Social awareness coupled with fashion.... Marketing Extraordinaire

Kenneth Cole, American fashion designer, has heavily been known for his fashion campaigns to always include social conscious messages.

One famous campaign was “We all walk in different shoes”.
This campaign featured people from different walks of life ie: someone with aids, a transgender woman*, someone with a prosthetic limb etc all ads featured different slogans which pleaded to the reader to think more deeply. The overall campaign was targeted to allow society to accept people for their differences instead of discriminating against them.
Some of the Ad’s like below:

[http://stylefrizz.com/200802/kenneth-cole-we-all-walk-in-different-shoes-advertising-campaign/]


But the most outstanding was the below which states in the U.S somebody is shot every 6 minutes, it then leaves us with the question “Is this what ARMS are for?” whilst being juxtaposed with the model tying their strap on their shoes using their Arms. It cleverly begs the question, "what should arms be used for? Shooting fellow citizens or tying up your own KC shoes?"

[http://stylefrizz.com/200802/kenneth-cole-we-all-walk-in-different-shoes-advertising-campaign/]

Clearly KC (Kenneth Cole) has mirrored fashion with social awareness in the past and quickly I’d love to show one of his more recent campaigns which delves into social networking.
It’s witty as I’m sure we’ve all discussed these points at some time especially of late.

The campaign itself is a short film which can be found (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdZp0ga7Xy4) but there are some stills below. The main socially conscious points are in the red text. Quotes such as, “Some deranged psychologists think email is making us emotionally detached ……. LOL” with the use of the LOL at the end just further making the point.

These quotes could easily be transferred to networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter etc. KC is definitely a smart designer with a passion for awareness and clever advertising or simply has a great marketing team behind him.

He’s also just opened an awareness blog attached to his main site www.kennethcole.com.
The blog raises social issues such as homelessness, poverty, the environment and features guest bloggers like Joey Pants, former Sopranos actor or Michael Strahan, New York Giants Player). [http://stylefrizz.com/200802/kenneth-cole-we-all-walk-in-different-shoes-advertising-campaign/]
I’d encourage you to view the video in the link above otherwise please view the below ads and enjoy this witty marketing.


Joseph Michael Anderson

www.kennethcole.com