Dr. Martens is a global footwear brand that, over six decades, has transformed into one of the most culturally relevant brands in the world.

Adopted by numerous subcultures over the years, the brand continues to surge, with its recent growth linked to its ability to recognise and leverage the growing importance of social media.

Paying tribute to the spirit and values of its wearers, the latest global brand campaign from Dr. Martens, “Tough As You”, focuses on stories of individual resilience.

Launching in AW19, the campaign first told the stories of four contributors overcoming adversity to become who they are today. SS20 saw the campaign evolve to feature the experiences of six further contributors, chosen for their commitment to empowerment and self-expression.

Asked “what does toughness mean to you?”, the stories revealed a common fight to overcome hardships while celebrating individual definitions of “toughness”.

The advent of the coronavirus pandemic soon brought forth a new question for AW20: What is “toughness” in 2020?

The wider Dr. Martens community was called upon to contribute their own experiences to this new phase of the campaign.

The challenge

The Dr. Martens team recognised that as content became increasingly short-lived on social platforms, they needed a way to activate those stories beyond social feeds and understand how audiences truly engaged with them.

To unify content, Dr. Martens needed a format that would allow these stories to not only be seen but also to be experienced by consumers in a single place on the Dr. Martens platform, acting as a central, first-party activation layer for the campaign.

This activation layer could then be used in outreach on the brand’s social channels, driving traffic to the Dr. Martens site, exposing audiences to campaign content and creating deeper engagement with the campaign.

The solution

Content activation and behavioural insight

Using the Amondo dashboard, the Dr. Martens global marketing team activated content from influencers and the wider Dr. Martens community into a structured, measurable brand experience.

By activating the campaign through a fixed-format Amondo Gallery, Dr. Martens was able to capture first-party interaction data on how audiences explored, engaged with, and moved between stories. All of which were behavioural insights which aren’t available through other social platforms.

“It’s fully-featured and really easy to use. Anyone can jump on and learn in 15 minutes.”
Harry Mason
Global Marketing, Dr. Martens

The “Tough As You” gallery activated the campaign through a powerful mixture of lo-fi video interviews and text-based content.

Clickthrough tiles

In addition, Dr. Martens’ team utilised Amondo’s Click-Through Tiles to link content interaction directly to relevant product pages elsewhere on the Dr. Martens site, allowing styles worn by contributors to be explored by viewers.

Social posts

To expose consumers to the “Tough as You” Gallery and invite the community to participate in the campaign experience, Dr. Martens used its social channels to link through to this and the submission page.

The results

“Our key objectives for the campaign were awareness and subsequent engagement. As a digital solution, the Gallery was the primary vehicle to achieve both of these things.”
Harry Mason
Global Marketing, Dr. Martens

Using Amondo, Dr. Martens was able to activate audience-contributed stories from across its community and bring them together into a single, unified setting.

The digital Gallery served as the primary activation layer of the “Tough As You” campaign, immersing viewers in the essence of the campaign and capturing the spirit of the Dr. Martens community.

The Gallery garnered impressive engagement, with an average of more than 90 interactions per submission and 300,000 impressions of the campaign content. The Gallery had 137% more page views than previous campaigns Dr. Martens had ran. Plus, this interaction data gave the team visibility into how audiences engaged with different stories, formats and contributors.

The Gallery’s Clickthrough Tiles generated a 3x higher click-through rate than industry benchmarks, despite their subtlety and lack of a direct call to action.

Beyond reach and engagement, the Gallery provided the Dr. Martens team with clarity on which stories drove deeper interaction, which contributors held attention, and how audiences navigated the experience.

By connecting content and real audience behaviour in one system, Amondo enabled Dr. Martens to move beyond awareness metrics and build intelligence on what types of stories and formats would perform in future brand campaigns.

You can explore more ways brands are using Amondo by exploring our case studies here.