Identify a current political, cultural, or social phenomenon and select a product from a pre-existing fashion, beauty or lifestyle brand to integrate the phenomenon into an online and in-store merchandise campaign while maintaining brand integrity and authenticity. For example, Chanel’s genderless fragrance or Nike’s launch of a plus-size line using plus sized mannequins in its NYC Flagship.

Although I definitely bounced a couple different ideas around in my head, once I found the right idea I was pretty set on what I ended up with. As the brand I chose is one I was already fond of and familiar with, I had no problem coming up with my idea and writing about it. Since sustainability and recycling has become very popular and important with a lot of people today, I chose to do my paper on the brand 4Ocean. This brand became popular by their hand-assembled bracelets made from recycled materials. For each product sold, 4Ocean removes one pound of trash from the ocean and promotes conservation by their animal themed bracelets (i.e. Coral Reef bracelet, Shark bracelet, etc.).

The merchandise campaign I created for 4Ocean was to add clothing made from recycled materials into their product assortment. Since they are already gathering an abundance of recycled materials from the ocean, they could integrate those materials into the creation of a clothing line. Other brands, for example, that do something similar to this is Patagonia and Sand Cloud. Not only would this fit perfectly into their existing brand mission, they have already produced a product similar to this. They created a pair of sneakers for their brand made out of sustainable and recycled materials.