merit
“Darn It” is a brand campaign for Darn Tough, the Vermont-based sock company that’s just celebrated 20 years in business. The creative is based on the insight that the brand’s lifetime warranty is their #1 differentiator in the category and strategically activates the brand name to build awareness. The hero spot, key visuals, and OOH are portraits of life’s little “darn it” moments, showing absurd scenarios where socks are destroyed (a campfire, a hungry dog, and even a falcon thief). The twist is that thanks to Darn Tough’s aggressive lifetime guarantee, the pairs are replaced by the brand, no questions asked. Because “life is tough, but our socks are tougher.” During concepting, we learned Darn Tough was sitting on a treasure trove of consumer stories, which we used to inspire the scenarios captured.
Major brand awareness lift through first-ever brand campaign.
To date, they’ve had enviable brand love but surprisingly low brand awareness when compared to competitors like Smartwool.
It was important that the integrated campaign targeted and captured new audiences, introducing the brand to a flock of new fans.
Nearly 8M impressions across paid channels with approx 4M new potential customers introduced to the brand.
Campaign video has over 92% completion rate.
Campaign landing page has a 48% engagement rate with 85% being new users.
350% increase in lifetime value for new customers acquired from campaign.
Paid media performance: 5-7x above historical benchmarks.
Founder/CEO inspired to remove all fine print from their warranty and change actual business policy → became most covered story in history of brand.
No
No — the falcon was trained for 2 weeks to capture that shot!
