Gushers, a General Mills brand, showcased young Black fashion designers during New York Fashion Week.
To continue the "Black Voices Create" initiative, Gushers' set out to elevate the value and exposure of young Black creators shaping culture. Ultimately, Gushers needed to maintain brand desire with teenagers by integrating online and real-world teenage culture in a meaningful and relevant way.
Gushers' Black Voices Create is a platform built to elevate young Black creators by providing access, exposure, and financial compensation to increase their channels' value. The first two years of the campaign focused on TikTok, combatting the biased algorithm and amplifying young Black voices at the micro-influencer level.
For the third year, Gushers, and agency partner Mindshare, wanted to take this initiative to the next level, beyond TikTok, to strategically bridge Gushers' brand and purpose efforts, with a focus on elevating the influence and compensation of young Black creators in the fashion space.
Gushers' target audience was teenagers around 18-years-old. This group explores who they are and how to express themselves. Fashion fuels them, ranking among their top passions and is a key outlet for their creative expression. They seek to express themselves both virtually and physically.
Black teens are the strategic growth target that the brand designs for and focuses on to serve in meaningful ways with purpose and brand actions.
As the most culturally diverse generation in history, gen Z has high standards for inclusivity and are drawn to brands that make a social impact that aligns with their values.
Black creators create and shape culture differently but are undervalued for their contributions. Since 2020, Gushers' goal has been to close the value gap for young Black creators through its Black Voices Create program.
Gushers partnered with three up-and-coming Black fashion designers, Sainabou Lowe (founder of and designer at SAIbysai), Camryn McClain (founder of and designer at Renée NYC), and Dale Horton (founder of and designer at Expired Citizens) to create a first-ever Gushers' Black Voices Create capsule collection, including six original pieces, two from each young designer.
Using the streetwear publication Hypebeast, Gushers shined a spotlight on the designers' craft and the stories behind it in a first-ever Black Voices Create capsule lookbook: a digital experience to drive exposure to their designs and individual brands. Gushers assembled a BIPOC crew both in front of and behind the camera using its marketing dollars to close the value gap across touchpoint levers.
Then — amid the hype of New York Fashion Week (NYFW) — Gushers let teens across the country try on the collection virtually via a custom Snapchat AR campaign and displayed the designs across interactive OOH hyper-localized to surround the Manhattan streets of the hottest events across NYFW.
The activation culminated in a live fashion week panel event at Hypebeast's New York City store, HBX, featuring the collection, an interactive AR try-on installation, and a discussion with Gushers' designers, sharing inspiration and learnings from their experience.
Beyond NYC, Gushers scaled exposure nationally with a robust teen-targeted Snapchat campaign, spotlighting its designers in Snapchat Ads and giving teens across the country access to interact with the Gushers Black Voices Create capsule collection virtually.
Gushers ultimately created an innovative, integrated campaign that captured gen Z's attention, as it:
