In its later years, Diesel had lost its edge and was trying to fit in. The rebel started to mimic other premium fashion brands in communication, pricing and packaging but without the right credentials to back it up. As a consequence, Diesel disappeared like any other bland, boring fashion brand.

After years of customer love, Diesel’s channels now started to be flooded with hate.

“Diesel is dead.” “Diesel isn’t cool anymore.” “Diesel is selling overpriced shit that looks like trash and is tearing apart at the seams.”

Real comments by real people. Suddenly it was cool to complain about how uncool Diesel was. And in an industry that lives off its status and coolness to survive, this meant certain death.

But it’s fine, everybody gets it. And just like everyone else, we could’ve just hidden it, ignored it, pretended it’s not there and carried on.

Right?

Nah

At one point or another, we have all been victims of trolls, cyber bullies and online haters. But, when you expose online hate with irony and light-heartedness, you disarm that online hate. It loses its ability to cause harm. Our idea was to turn Diesel’s latest collection into a tool for doing just that: exposing, mocking and ultimately disarming online hate. It’s an idea we call Ha(u)te Couture. Each item is a reminder that the more hate you wear, the less you care.

We wanted to go against online hate and deal with this the Diesel way.

While other brands were following the codes of the category, Diesel had always been delivering disruptive originality. This brand wasn’t a rebel just for the sake of it, it had always inspired people to take the alternative road to successful living.

“Online hate is inevitable, but caring about it is optional.”

When we’re ashamed of our flaws and the criticism we receive about them, we try to hide it. But by hiding it we give hate more power. Instead, we decided to expose it. Show hate for what it was.

The truth is, the more you expose the hate you get, treating it with irony and irreverence, the less harm it will cause you.

And the best vehicle to expose it? Say “hi” to the new Diesel collection.

We created Ha(u)te Couture. A unique collection designed to disempower hate by exposing it.

FIRST, US.

We started by exposing the hate Diesel got. With sweaters, hoodies and denim jackets claiming that “Diesel is dead”, or “Diesel is not cool anymore”. Exposing the real comments with self-irony was key in showing how little we cared.

NEXT, CELEBRITIES.

To launch the collection, Diesel partnered with some of the most polarizing celebrities, including Nicki Minaj, Gucci Mane, Bella Thorne and Tommy Dorfman. Each star chose a hateful word they received online and had it plastered on Diesel hoodies, jackets and t-shirts.

THEN, EVERYONE

By enabling customization, anyone who has ever been a victim of online hate was able to participate, create their own customized pieces online with instagram filters and gifs and offline, in over 40 markets and thus taking back the hate.

Within 4 days, 35% of the collection was gone. E-commerce traffic grew by 30% from last year.

The ads successfully captured the attention of the audience as indicated by the double digit increase in recall. A lift of 50% was seen in the awareness of the Diesel Hate Couture campaign. And most importantly, purchase intention almost doubled post campaign. (Source: Facebook Brand Lift results)

Hate Couture was featured in more than 200 global media sources, like The New Yorker, People Mag, BBC, Vice, WWD amongst many others, earning a total reach of 800 MIL.

(Not bad considering Facebook and Instagram didn’t allow sponsored posts). More so, a percentage of all the profits were donated to anti-cyberbullying and LGBTQ+ rights associations. And, ultimately we initiated the successful disempowerment of countless hateful comments on social media.