Converse campaign tunes into music lovers

The first campaign created especially for the brand’s China operations by Wieden & Kennedy will run in tier one, two and three cities from this month until September.

It targets the brand’s core audience of 16- to 24-year-olds with a gritty-but-glam aesthetic designed to stand out from the glut of Olympic-related marketing.

MindShare, together with Converse China and licensing partner Yue Cheng Sports, has been in charge of the media planning and buying.

“Converse has been in China for 15 years, so we don’t have to introduce the brand to the consumers,” said Cheryl Calegari, senior marketing director, Asia-Pacific at Converse China.

Instead, the creative work will focus on brand building.

Converse, which celebrates its centenary this year, has been in China for a relatively long time compared to competitors such as Diesel, Levi’s and Puma.

However, the brand lacks the athletic connotations it enjoys in the US, where its first basketball shoes were produced in 1917.

“In China, Converse doesn’t have the same sporting history, so we’re closely identifying ourselves with the music scene, which is one of the areas where young people in China can express their identity in a really active way,” said Calegari.

The copywriting merges the characters for ‘Yun dong’ (doing sports), while showing images of bands and music fans in various surroundings.

“The twist we’ve put into the copy implies that Converse gives people their own take on ‘activity’,” said Ray Chan, creative director at Wieden & Kennedy.

Converse China has built up cachet within the alternative Beijing music scene some of whose protagonists appear in the advertising.

The campaign will be running across print, out-of-home and digital, but not TV.

Calegari argued that the mass of advertising around the Olympics had made televison too cluttered to be worthwhile.