back to school

Brands

Levi’s® Goes Back to School with New Approach

Stacy Doren and Anisa Kumar
Levi Strauss & Co.
September 3, 2020

Back-to-school season is shaping up to be anything but conventional this year. At a time when hardly anything is following tradition, we’ve adjusted our traditional back-to-school approach. The Levi’s® brand has teamed up with key partners to engage with students through new platforms.

Partnering With Squad

One of the most exciting parts of the back-to-school season is going to the mall with friends and putting outfits together for the first day of school. Knowing that in-store shopping would be challenging this year, the Levi’s® team went to the drawing board to brainstorm how to digitally recreate that shared experience.

Enter Squad.

Squad is a popular screensharing application, particularly with teenage girls. Using Squad, a group of friends can join a group video chat and easily share their screen to look at the same content together.

Leveraging this platform, the Levi’s® brand will host virtual styling and shopping events with groups of friends and a Levi’s® stylist. The stylist will guide groups through back-to-school fashion trends, give tips on how to style specific garments and walk through recommended products based on the groups’ interests. The friends can weigh-in on what they like, find inspiration and help put together and shop the perfect outfit.

These virtual styling and shopping experiences will launch on the Squad app in September.

Levi’s® x Snapchat at Kohl’s

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, social media platforms have seen a surge in usage. To meet our fans where they are, Levi’s® teamed up with Kohl’s to create a unique virtual closet experience on Snapchat that enables consumers to view and create various looks, using augmented reality and portal technology. Kohl’s featured Levi’s® women’s products in the closet, allowing you to browse an edited assortment of denim, truckers and tees and then virtually mix and match options to create new looks. Once you land on a look you love, you can click “shop now” to purchase via Kohls.com.

And if you’re looking for more inspiration with our Levi’s offering at Kohl’s, check out country music star and friend of the brand, Brett Young, customizing his Levi’s® trucker jacket in this video.

Teaming Up With Zeekit

One of the ongoing challenges with online shopping is imagining what the clothing will look like on your body type and then ordering the right size. To combat this challenge, the Levi’s® brand is teaming up with a company called Zeekit to show three additional sizes on virtually rendered, inclusive models.

Consumers will be able to get a better sense of the appropriate size to order and how the clothing will appear on a similar body type to their own. The overall goal is to have more diverse models, increase purchases and reduce returns. You’ll begin to see these virtual images starting on Amazon in the coming weeks.

No matter what back-to-school looks like for students this year, we are excited to find new ways to connect and show up for our fans in creative ways.