Leading footwear retailer schuh is ‘schelebrating’ the quirks and oddities that make us all a little bit different, with a brand campaign that brings its ‘same but different’ platform to life at a scale the retailer has not attempted before.
At the heart of the platform is a simple idea: we’re all the same, because we’re all different in our own weird little ways. Rather than asking its audience to fit in, schuh is celebrating the quirks, tastes and contradictions that make people themselves.
The campaign is the first work from Ace of Hearts since its appointment as schuh’s lead creative partner, and it builds an entire brand world around that idea, including a new visual identity, schuh language and a hero shoot by the founder of Buffalo Zine.
As a Scottish retailer with an oddly spelt name, schuh knows a thing or two about being different, and the campaign puts that difference front and centre to inspire the world to embrace its own. Built on the fact that people are eternally unsure how to pronounce the brand’s name, it creates a distinctive schuh language that sprinkles the signature “sch” and silent “h” across words and phrases, running through out-of-home posters, online and into store, turning one of the brand’s quirks into a recognisable expression of its point of view.
The visual identity includes a system of bespoke stickers, taking its cue from the stickers people use to personalise everything from laptops and skateboards to social posts, the small, deliberate choices that signal who someone is. The stickers give the brand a flexible visual language that feels distinctly its own while leaving room for people to make it theirs, appearing across all campaign touchpoints.
At the centre of it all is a festive shoot photographed by Adrian González-Cohen with Iconoclast. Built around a house party of young people celebrating the holidays together in different quirky ways, the shoot captures the retailer’s playful, chaotic spirit, with schuh’s new identity woven through every frame.
The idea extends across window displays, lightboxes and web imagery, encouraging people to ‘schelebrate different’. Oxford Circus, White City, Manchester and Liverpool will launch the campaign with dedicated 3D window displays, and store teams across the UK will be given the opportunity to decorate their own windows with festive stickers, dialling up the differences between stores and creating unique schuh shop windows across the country.
The idea is also amplificed through creators who are invited to share the quirks and contradictions that make them who they are, putting schuh’s brand point of view in the hands of the audience too.
“schuh has always celebrated the idea that our differences aren’t something to hide but something to embrace,” said Laura King, schuh Chief Marketing Officer. “In a world of algorithms and carefully curated digital identities, being proud of what makes you unique can feel harder than ever. Our same but different brand campaign champions the idea that being different is what makes us who we are.”
The national campaign will launch on 2nd November across OOH, connected TV, creator content, stores and digital until the end of the year. Media planning and activation led by PHD Manchester.
