For anyone who hasn’t yet seen it, the Levis Facebook page is well worth perusing.
It’s a textbook example of a brand doing something massively simple that engages its fans while at the same time getting the brand message across – that Levis is as embedded in culture as it is a denim phenomenon. The page itself makes any other brand in its category look something of a Johnny-come-lately lacking the sheer weight of Levis’ heritage and history.
The work started with the brand reaching out to ask its fans for photos of themselves wearing the jeans in the relatively recent past – the 50s, 60s and 70s particularly – with the promise that the best would be added to the timeline and go down in the annals of the company.
Since then, they’ve enlisted an historian and archivist (who may indeed be an historian and archivist, but then may equally an eager beaver brand manager, who knows) to catalogue their long history.
The resulting page is a deep, rich look back at over 100 years of Levis’ past – with cultural references all over the place.
And unlike so many other Facebook timelines that seek to mine an archive to show more than the past five or so years of the company’s past, it has genuine depth. Most pages that attempt the feat have one or two posts once you’ve gone back past the 1980s. Levis manages to sustain its story back to the 1900s and keeps you engaged with interesting, thoughtful content.
Textbook stuff.
