Truly Deeply/Madly

Cre­ative Brand Design Col­lab­o­ra­tion with a Cap­i­tal C
In what may be a first for cre­ative and style col­lab­o­ra­tion, shoe brand Sebago have teamed with uber-cool shoe designer Ron­nie Fieg from David Z and a pack of the most influ­en­tial fashion/style blog­gers to cre­ate a new range of cus­tom shoes with a won­der­fully, rich, socially-loaded brand experience.

The Nexus Project cel­e­brates the col­lab­o­ra­tive spirit, of Ron­nie Fieg and a select group of influ­en­tial style blog­gers, who have teamed with Sebago to design a series of ten cus­tom shoes. Fieg and some of the most influ­en­tial blog­gers includ­ing Mar­cus Troy, Jake Davis, Greg Wein­stein of Cul­ture Shoq, William Yan, and Joshua Kissi of Street Eti­quette expe­ri­enced a com­plete immer­sion at Sebago’s Domini­can Repub­lic Facil­ity where they shot this trailor for the Sebago col­lec­tion. Designs include indi­vid­ual takes on the sev­eral of Sebago’s styles such as Dock­sides, Light­house boot as well as other exclu­sive Nexus styles.

“Ron­nie has a well-known his­tory of putting together great col­lab­o­ra­tions,” said Gary Malamet, Sebago’s gen­eral man­ager. “We’ve worked with him many times in the past with suc­cess. When he came to us with this project, we knew we had a chance to develop some­thing com­pletely fresh. In this day of col­lab­o­ra­tions, and the unstop­pable power of blogs, we felt the com­bi­na­tion of the two was unprecedented”.

Sebago worked with the blog­gers and Fieg and took them to the man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in the Domini­can Repub­lic, bring­ing in rep­re­sen­ta­tives of some of the world’s best tan­ner­ies and var­i­ous sup­pli­ers to pore through leathers, col­ors, fin­ish details and more to select mate­ri­als for each cus­tom shoe. Each par­tic­i­pant in turn went through the process of cre­at­ing their shoe by hand with the team of mas­ter crafts­men at Sebago. Processes included soak­ing and heat­ing the leathers and finally stitch­ing the shoes together – a seven hour project for each shoe — fur­nish­ing the blog­gers with the kind of brand expe­ri­ence that pro­vides plenty of rich mate­r­ial for the brand sto­ry­telling to-come.

Through­out the sum­mer of 2010, a lim­ited run of 48 pairs will be cre­ated of each Nexus style. The shoes will be avail­able exclu­sively at David Z’s flag­ship store in New York as well as davidz.com. Blog­gers will each bring their own angle and story to their blogs to com­mu­ni­cate the Nexus Project. The entire col­lab­o­ra­tion was filmed by Jake Davis on loca­tion in the Domini­can Repub­lic. The heady com­bi­na­tion of cool-cred designer and social savvy influ­en­tial blog­gers have pro­vided a won­der­ful shot in the arm for Sebago’s brand and cor­po­rate image.

The News Mak­ers Become the News
This col­lab­o­ra­tion breaks with the tra­di­tional approach by includ­ing this new gen­er­a­tion of fash­ion media influ­encers in the process. As the line blurs between fash­ion designer and fash­ion com­men­ta­tor we find our­selves some­where in the murky waters of real­ity TV pop star pro­grams where the power of the media is blend­ing with the art of the cre­ator. Is this another exam­ple of those who have the power exer­cis­ing it to live out the designer dream that they never had the tal­ent to pur­sue in the first place? Before fash­ion and shoe design­ers around the world throw their hands in the air in despair, I think it’s worth wait­ing to taste the proof in the pud­ding. The thing about cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tions is that they can bear some unusu­ally tasty fruit — and in this case, with designer Ron­nie Fieg steer­ing the project from its incep­tion — the shoe designs may well be inspi­ra­tional. That being the case, Sebago will have both a great range, and a fully engaged swarm of blog­garazi ready to influ­ence the fash­ion masses. This just might be game, set and match to Ron­nie F and the guys at Sebago as they team up to show us how to cre­ate col­lab­o­ra­tive brand magic New School style.

Each blog­ger will have their own trailer that can be seen on their respec­tive web­sites. Check out each blog­gers trailer through­out the release of this project: http://www.ronniefieg.com/, http://www.marcustroy.com/, http://www.jakedavis.typepad.com/, http://www.williamyan.com/, http://www.streetetiquette.com/, http://www.cultureshoq.com/

At Truly Deeply we just love cre­ative col­lab­o­ra­tions. If you’d like to get all col­lab­o­ra­tive with us in order to make your brand stand out from the pack, why not get in touch – we’d love to connect.

David Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
For monthly updates of our think­ing, click here to receive our free Brand Newslet­ter
Designer of Brand Collaborations

Tags: and Joshua Kissi, Brand Agency, Brand Design, brand designer Melbourne, brand designers, Brand Experience, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-gesture, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Creative Ideas, Culture Shoq, David Z, Graphic Design Melbourne, Greg Weinstein, Jake Davis, Marcus Troy, Ronnie Fieg, Sebago, Street Etiquette, The Nexis Project, William Yan

This entry was posted on Monday, August 2nd, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Graphic Design Melbourne. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.