Vans | These Projects Are Ads for Creativity

posted by Robyn Pitts March 10, 2021

Vans, a global icon of creative expression, has recently launched a new campaign; These Projects Are Ads for Creativity. The new artist-first brand campaign showcases creativity in its purest form. Instead of following a conventional ad campaign approach, Vans committed their resources to support the physical act of creativity itself, empowering artists to bring their ideas to life in the vast forms that art can play. Repping the campaign in the UK are London-based artists Alex Jenkins and Eloise Dörr.

Empowering artists to bring their ideas to life in the vast forms that art can play, Vans encouraged and enabled their family of creatives to go out and make things, be that drawings, sculptures, music videos, custom shoes, or digital animations. Thus, they continue to celebrate the diversity of creativity itself and honour the talented individuals behind the work.

“Instead of creating advertising that talks about creativity, we wanted to use this campaign as a vehicle to showcase true, physical creativity in all of its forms. So we simply enabled creatives all over the world to make things,” said Rob Teague, Vans global executive creative director. “Drawings, paintings, music, sculptures, video edits, skate spots, crazy animations, weird surfboards, and things we didn’t expect. In place of traditional ads, we as a brand wanted to get out of the way and support a diverse range of people, and their different creative outputs. That’s what Vans is all about – to not just talk about creative expression, but to actively champion it through our products, platforms and campaigns.”

On this side of the pond the campaign is fronted by Alex Jenkins; an illustrator and cartoonist, and Eloise Dörr; a skateboarder and artist. For the campaign, Alex brought one of his characters to life as a six-foot-tall fibreglass sculpture, and Eloise chose to create a triptych of painted skateboards.