FashionablyMarketing.Me’s interviews Vice Present of Marketing David Ireland to discuss Diesel, social media and the be stupid campaign.

Last week, Mashable published my case study on Diesel’s Use of Foursquare for their Faces of Stupid Campaign.

While writing the piece, I spoke with David Ireland, Vice President of Marketing for Diesel. We talked about the campaign and Diesel’s aggressive marketing campaign and what it meant for the brand as whole.

Here’s the interview in its entirety.

Macala Wright: The Diesel BE STUPID campaign goes beyond most brand’s traditional social marketing campaigns, and it’s a full scale international marketing and awareness campaign going across every country.

I visited several Diesel stores to see how the campaign was taking hold. From what I see, it’s completely cohesive; from your website to the layout of your store floors, there isn’t anything that doesn’t fit.  How have you managed to orchestrate such a large scale campaign that translates from online to offline?

David Ireland: The majority of our creative concepts are handled out of our Headquarters [HQ] in Italy, from the ad creative to the window designs.  It’s up to the individual countries/subsidiaries of the company to remix some of those messages for their respective cultures/media, but the creative aspects are always left as is.  As a subsidiary we are allowed to take “Be Stupid” as a concept and create experiential and online promotional actions that we feel fit our demographic in the States, and we also work with HQ on our Media Buys to make sure we have proper alignment for the company’s branding efforts.

Some of the things that you might have seen recently were our promotions on Gawker, Hypebeast, Coolhunting as well as our new contest Faces of Stupid, which is an interactive concept that asks our customers “What’s the Stupidest thing you have ever done that changed your life for the positive…”   There is a widget on DieselContest.com that allows you to upload your picture and your story which is then voted on, the winner has a choice of swimming with sharks, zero gravity flight and other amazing experiences.

This contest is a way for us to communicate the global campaign in a very viral and fun way, as obviously a huge portion of our audience are avid web surfers. We also run our own Twitter feed; Twitter allows us to announce special events and promotions to our Twitter followers first.  It’s all very cohesive and in line with HQ’s original concept.  We definitely had a lot of fun with the remix, though.

MW: When this campaign first launched, it asked for video submissions.  What changed that marketing tactic? Was it too high barrier to get quality entries?

DI: This was an initiative that was handled directly from HQ.  There was not a large window for people to upload, as the site was in the middle of being redesigned. It was a great way to kick off some good interaction with our customers, as they are a very creative and inspired group of people.  HQ continues to build on that interaction with the new site, so it’s just taking new forms and constantly evolving.  We need to move in Internet time now to stay fresh.

Diesel has created a great campaign for customers or would be customers by creating the Faces of Stupid. It seems like a pretty elaborate campaign, but it’s STUPIDLY simple for participants and customers who want to enter. The rewards for participants who do this is amazing; it shows me that Diesel takes it online marketing seriously and values their customers.

MW: Many brands don’t go to the lengths that Diesel has – is this for the press factor or because the brand truly wants to create unforgettable experiences for their customers?

DI: In regards to this contest and our overall philosophy, the answer is simple…We live the lifestyle that we sell, and we want to share that with the people that are fans of the brand. We book the bands that we want to hear; we throw parties that we want to go to.  That’s what has always made Diesel so amazing.  It’s just a very authentic relationship between the brand and our customers. This is a brand that compliments a certain lifestyle and mind set.

Hence, the reason you see such a strong manifesto as “BE STUPID” — it’s polarizing at its very core.  Faces of Stupid was just a great way to utilize the web for everyone to share their own “STUPID” experience and give away a ridiculously awesome prize to the winner. These are all trips that we would love to take… I’ll be kind of jealous of our winner to be honest .

View our exclusive coverage of the event and the foursquare campaign buzz that lead up to it!

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