Reposition ellesse as a luxury Sneaker brand

Challenge

We’ve been working with ellesse for a couple of years to help reposition the brand as an icon of luxury culture. In it’s heydey it was worn by cultural kingpins like Mick Jagger and Princess Diana. But lately the brand has fallen out of favour with cultural tastemakers. Our ambition was to help the brand regain it’s position as one of the worlds most elevated sports brands.

Solution

Rather than one big activation we planned a series of strategic moments across the year to help ellesse show up in luxury culture in a way that felt authentic.

We worked with talent from our community including Kit Price, Fiona Zanetti and D’reccio to give the brand credibility with a youth audience. Starting with an Intimate Dinner in Milan over Mens Fashion Week in June, we hosted an exclusive party in collaboration with the CNCPT Store in NYC and a closing party at Bar Basso in Milan in September – right before the hero campaign dropped.

We shot the campaign in a traditional 20th-century Italian show villa, tapping into the brands’ heritage and the content embraces the brands playful side. To support the launch we also ran a seeding campaign with talent across Europe, all ensuring that we put ellesse back where it belongs. At the pinnacle of luxury sportswear.