Everything is made by trades, but because the trades are everywhere - they’re nowhere. Invisible to the everyday eye. Even on a day like Labor Day, a day that was made to celebrate the trades is now celebrated for sales instead. And given trades workers are already one of the most overlooked and underappreciated makers of, well, everything (literally) - our job was to ensure THIS Labor Day didn’t pass without loudly getting them the respect & recognition they deserved. The perfect objective for a brand like Red Wing Shoes that’s spent over a century working to open people’s eyes to the impact trades workers have on our world. And also why our core KPI was a simple one: Reach / open as many eyes as possible for the spend we had - with a minimum goal of 500MM impressions.

For 115+ years, Red Wing Shoes has made shoes. And most people know trades workers make shoes. Just like most people know trades workers make buildings, bridges, and homes. But what most people forget, is that trades workers also make planes, phones, TVs, this computer. You get it. They’re everywhere, yet we overlook them like they’re nowhere. So we decided to take a symbol that appears everywhere ™ and turn it into a symbol for how trades workers have a hand in everything. Instead of standing for trademark, ™ became our “Trades-Made” mark, a tangible reminder that behind every product, there’s a tradesperson who made it. But to really make the point that EVERYTHING is trades-made, we needed other brands to do the same. So we designed our campaign to be open-source from the start, and invited companies to become “Trades-Made” brands over Labor Day Weekend. Amazingly, 32 brands did.

Our strategy was built from the truth that trades workers are so foundational to the world we live in, they’ve become invisible. They’ve faded into the background of our lives. They are overlooked and undervalued, always in sight but never in mind. Par for the course in a world that’s so hyperfocused on being “frictionless” and “seamless” that we’ve forgotten that things don’t actually JUST HAPPEN, like magic. Things are made to happen. And most of all, made to happen by trades workers. What we needed people to see was that the real magic was in the makers. They’re the magicians that make our world work, yet we manage to take them for granted everyday. We can’t see them in our world of “things”. So we asked ourselves the question - what if we could? What if there was a tangible way to show the world that everything is trades-made?

Since our ability to scale the idea that everything is “Trades-Made” was driven by our ability to inspire other brands to opt into our campaign, we decided to launch in the lead-up to Labor Day just when we knew they were gearing up for it themselves. To get their attention, we released a beautifully shot OLV across all of our platforms a week ahead of schedule - inviting them to join our movement. In the video, we directed them to easily access our entire suite of “Trades-Made”campaign assets via microsite - including the design and after-effects files for the video that reeled them in. 32 brands took the bait. By the time Labor Day rolled around, our “Trades-Made” mark wasn’t just being used across all of our channels, store-fronts and products. It was being used across 32 other brands. That’s 32 campaigns celebrating trades workers for the price of one.

Our goal was to reach/open as many eyes as possible to the impact that trades workers make on our world for the spend we had - with a minimum of 500MM impressions. Not only did we hit it, the final tally of +755MM impressions was more than 150% of our original target. And while it wasn’t the goal, Red Wing’s sales website traffic increased 87% post-launch. But more than anything, what made this work meaningful to the trades workers we celebrated and the people whose eyes we wanted to open, wasn’t us touting our trades-made products. It was the other brands people didn’t expect touting THEIR “Trades-Made” marks. It was the fact that “Trades-Made” was physically mounted on buildings, and projected onto monuments, and tagged onto products. Alone, our “Trades-Made” mark would easily go unnoticed. But together, it was impossible to overlook how much tradespeople touch our world.