Influencers. Always on point with the latest trends. Always copping the coolest merch for free. Always attending the coolest parties. Everybody wants to be like them. Our feeds tell us that an influencer’s life must be amazing. But is it, really?

For the new Diesel Denim Collection, we needed to show that an effortless life, a life where you don’t try too much be that with your clothes or social media behaviour, is the real mark of successful living. We needed to get people on board with the belief that living a carefree life is better than trying to get social media fame.

We launched the SS19 collection by encouraging everyone to BE A FOLLOWER. Through this campaign, Diesel took the power away from social media’s influential elite, and gave it to the 99% and only rewarded them as they would reward influencers. It’s a celebration of those who don’t try too hard. It’s a reminder that real successful living is an effortless art. Of course, this makes SS19 the perfect opportunity for Diesel to get back to its denim roots, because what’s more effortlessly cool than jeans?

After looking at data we realised our target is swimming in a sea of influencers and sponsored posts:

-On Instagram only there were more than 26 million brand influencer sponsored posts in 2018, with that number estimated to double in 2019.

-90% of our target audience spending around 3 hours per day on social media, out of which 2 hours on Instagram and Facebook.

- influencer sponsored posts are great for exposure, but not great for e-commerce visits and conversions

- our target may follow influencers, but they interact and trust their peers more (83% of people completely or somewhat trust the recommendations from friends and family, making it the most trusted form of marketing, Nielsen 2015)

That’s why we decided to turn the wheel and made our followers the heroes, turning them into ambassadors and use the influencer budget to reward them for bringing e-commerce traffic and conversions.

With the help of 5 self-ironic influencers, we dropped dedicated pieces of content on social media to encourage everybody to be a follower and open their own SIDE:BIZ - a unique link that basically allows anyone to open their own diesel e-commerce store. Every time their friends click on that link to shop, they will go to diesel e-commerce, but we’ll know exactly who sent them there and we’ll reward them with discounts, free DIESEL products and one-of-a-kind experiences.

People started opening their own SIDE:BIZ and soon enough started promoted it on their channels with native content they would usually create: Stories, posts, snaps, chats. With users tagging DIESEL we got access to the content and we gave them a hand by re-posting their stories and posts on our channels thus driving our audience to their own shops, helping them get better results and rewards.

37.000 SIDE:BIZ STORES OPENED IN JUST THE FIRST WEEK.

E-COMMERCE VISITS INCREASED BY 365%, MORE THAN ANY OTHER INFLUENCER CAMPAIGN BROUGHT US.

+18% New Customers

+33% Online Sales

55,6 Million Video Views

258 Million impressions

+290.000 new followers on the Diesel Channels

+230% engagement