Zalando is Helsinki Pride’s main partner. Zalando is seen more as a functional brand than a brand with a strong personality or standing for clear values. The brand has to improve in driving relevance, conversations and talkability. Zalando’s vision is to become the Starting Point for Fashion, and diversity and inclusion as well as driving positive change have an important role in this journey. Zalando is striving to show support for diversity and inclusion, openly stand with minority communities and speak up against injustice and inequality. Our brief was to build a digital- and social-first holistic campaign around Zalando’s partnership with Helsinki Pride, which leaned on their brand belief of empowering self-expression through embracing personal stories, based on a local and highly relevant partnership. The campaign was to deliver according to Zalando’s marketing vision and strengthen the perception of Zalando as a value-driven, authentically inclusive and socially responsible brand.

Dresscode: Freedom campaign turns the spotlight on senior pioneers of the Finnish LGBTQ+ scene. The campaign shows these pioneers in outfits they were longing to wear decades ago but were unable to because of the prevailing intolerance – or the fear of being labelled mentally ill or a criminal. In this campaign we show the true faces of the change. In individual true story films of each pioneer they had a chance to tell their life story and what part fashion has played in their journey. With these stories we give the younger generations a proof that change is possible and you just need the courage to fight for your rights. This campaign celebrates people who were forced to hide away their true selves and conform to the prevailing dress-codes and norms of the time. These pioneers carved the path for the rights that gender/sexual minorities have today.

In 2021, Helsinki Pride celebrated some important milestones in Finland: 50 years since the decriminalisation of homosexuality, 40 years since homosexuality was erased from the mental health classification, and 30 years since the establishment of Helsinki Pride. Therefore, the focus of the public conversation was in these achievements. Our strategy was to get into this same conversation by telling stories about Pride pioneers who finally have the freedom to dress they would’ve wanted to when they were young. We implemented clothes into the conversation as a symbol of freedom and our stories became part of the overall narrative of pride community’s fight for equality. We targeted our campaign to new and existing customers, all sexes between 18-34yrs. Our target group was intelligent, highly educated, curious and optimistic people who love fashion as part of looking and feeling good and as a way to express themselves.

The campaign started at the same time with Helsinki Pride week and was live for two weeks.

The multichannel campaign had a strong presence on social media and in outdoor advertising spaces around the major cities in Finland, including large display screens in central Helsinki. The ad campaign was supported by a series of influencer collaborations, which added a new layer to the campaign story by combining the LGBTQ+ influencers of the modern-day with the pioneers. Pioneer's stories were also shared through PR to gain more public conversation.

Dresscode Freedom advertising campaign reached 1,25 million individual Finns with altogether 25,3 million ad impressions. The campaign made an all time record in Brand Heat, which is Zalando’s own online metric including ratio between engagement and impressions and positive sentiment. Brand Heat was +11% higher than in Zalando Summer Campaign 2021 and +82% higher than in Zalando Pride Campaign 2020. While engaging the audience, it also made them to act: Click-through-rate rocketed up to +113% higher CTR than in Zalando Pride campaign 2020 and +59% higher CTR than in Zalando Summer Campaign 2021. ??Additionally the stories of the pioneers were engaging also in PR. In Finnish news media they got a total amount of 7,9 million impressions in various articles. Conversation was raised all the way to the main media in Finland. And due to this raised conversation Finland's transgender law about forced sterilization is finally proceeding to parliament.