Zalando has been supporting the LGBTQIA+ community in different markets for many years. This year, the client decided to start supporting this group also in Poland, the 2nd least tolerant country in Europe towards the LGBTQIA+ community. The task for the agency was to develop a concept that would present Zalando as a brand that understands the polish social context, and empowers this community.

70% of members of the Polish LGBTQIA+ community have been victims of homophobic attacks. Polish people are unaware of this. To bring this issue to public attention, we collected clothes damaged during such homophobic attacks, and asked famous fashion designers to repurpose them into something special: symbols of pride. These clothes were used as a tool to ensure people discovered the traumatic experiences their wearers went through, and to show the huge scale of homophobia in Poland.

In recent days, the situation of the LGBTQIA+ community in Poland has been constantly deteriorating. From LGBTQIA+ activists arrested for hanging the rainbow flag on Warsaw monuments, to the president of the country, Andrzej Duda, declaring that “LGBT is not people - it’s an ideology”, we knew that, as a brand, we had to do something to support this community. We decided to approach this issue from an optic connected to our business: clothes. This led us to this campaign, in which we use broken clothes as an analogy for the suffering this group is and has been going through.

The main assets, teaser and hero film, were published on the social media channels of all the partners involved. These videos triggered a wave of hate speech aimed at the LGBTQIA+ community. Governmental and conservative media published materials related to the campaign, writing about how “German capital was supporting homosexuals in Poland''. Another touchpoints of the campaign included a series of Spotify podcasts, in which the heroes from the main film told their stories in the first person, and a series of photographs by Zuza Krajewska, famous polish photographer known for social projects as Vote Together, #sexedPL, or Surplus. These pictures were also featured on the cover of a special issue of "Wysokie Obcasy", one of the most famous Sunday magazines in Poland.

The campaign was eagerly reported by the largest Polish media outlets, including Gazeta Wyborcza, Rzeczpospolita, Vogue, KMAG, NewOnce, Elle or Noizz. It was also featured in foreign titles like Contagious Magazine, Queer DE, Fashion United, Nuevo Periodico, Rapides Nouvelles, Best Photography, AdForum or Ethical Marketing.

As a part of the action, "Wysokie Obcasy" the most popular magazine in Poland, published a special issue, with protagonists appearing on the cover. The main film received hundreds of responses in social media, as for example those of politician and cultural scientist Michal Boni, journalists Bertold Kittel and Karolina Korwin-Piotrowska, or writer Ludwika Wlodek.

Over 19 million Poles learnt about the campaign, and the PR coverage of the action reached a value of over 4 million zlotys. In Social Media channels, the video materials reached 12.5 million people, 30% of which was organic, achieving an engagement rate of 4.8%.