Dr. Martens has turned the line on its heel loop into a global brand platform, with Chloë Sevigny, Jordan Stephens and Naomi Watanabe answering what makes their sole bounce.
Dr. Martens has launched a new global brand platform, With Bouncing Soles, fronted by the actress Chloë Sevigny, the musician and writer Jordan Stephens and the Japanese comedian Naomi Watanabe. The line is not new. It has been stitched into the heel loop of every 1460 boot since the first pair came off the line in 1960, which the brand says makes this a name that has been hiding in plain sight for 65 years.
Sevigny, Stephens and Watanabe lead the autumn-winter campaign, alongside what the brand calls community advocates in markets around the world. Each answers the question at the centre of the platform, “What makes your sole bounce?”. Sevigny told Footwear News her answer was taking on new roles and staying curious: “I’ve always been drawn to pieces that become more personal the longer you live in them, and Dr. Martens has always represented that for me.” Stephens, formerly one half of Rizzle Kicks and now a writer and mental health campaigner, says his answer is words.
The product story is five of the brand’s oldest shapes, the 1460 boot, the 1461 shoe, the Adrian loafer, the 2976 Chelsea boot and the 8065 Mary Jane, remade in Crazy Horse leather with a new Cherry Red finish for the season. Neil Cummings, global brand creative director, described the platform as “an invitation for people to celebrate creativity, individuality and the confidence to express who they are.” The launch material does not credit an outside agency.
The hero spot is backed by an events programme rather than a media blitz. In London that means an honesty library pop-up at Lala Books co-curated with Stephens, a poetry night, a fanzine workshop run by So Young magazine and a pop-up comedy club hosted by Paddy Young. New York gets a leather keychain workshop at the SoHo store on 6 October and a celebration curated by the photographer Sophia Wilson two days later. It is a subculture playbook, and it is the one Dr. Martens has always been best at.
This is the first big brand statement of a turnaround that is starting to show in the numbers. In the year to March, adjusted pre-tax profit rose 61 per cent to £55m even as revenue fell 2.9 per cent to £764.9m, as Marketing Week reported, and chief executive Ije Nwokorie has spent a year moving the company from what he calls channel first to consumer first. Fewer discounts and a stronger brand are the whole plan. A platform built to outlast a season is what that plan looks like in an advert.
The approach rhymes with two other heritage brands this month. Barbour put Sienna Miller and Idris Elba in front of a hundred-year-old jacket, and Next showed what a bigger marketing budget returns when the product is right. Dr. Martens has the harder job, because its customers are younger and its recent years were spent chasing them with promotions, so finding the platform on its own heel loop is a good start. For what a brand platform is meant to do, our explainer covers the theory.
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