Converse: Sneakers Would

Your dirty pair of Cons have seen a lot of good times at gigs and parties no doubt. Converse Australia knows it, and wants you to personify those good times you’ve trod. 

They’re the shoe that everybody can wear, no matter your scene or style, comfortably and confidently. And while the diverse range of individuals who wear Cons are all free, walking ads, the company’s had some pretty incredible marketing campaigns over the last decade. There was the Cons-as-corsets campaign in Japan, its 100 year anniversary campaign featuring ‘Icons of the 21st Century’ (including journalist Hunter S. Thompson, M.I.A., James Dean, Karen O, rapper Common and more, and its ‘timeless’ visual-art aligned campaign in 2005.

Converse’s latest global campaign is maybe its best yet. Entitled ‘Shoes Are Boring’, it may just seriously compete with Nike’s iconic ‘Just Do It’. Here’s the gist of the campaign, as it existed in the UK - it had two phases originally, taking place in East London – the first phase was a series of posters on the Tube, billboards, shop shutters, commissioned street art pieces, sculptures etc, that created general awareness. It was then followed with a series of live events and public actions (giant bubble wrap hopscotch walkways stations, portable truck sound system, open air parties) that caused plenty of hype on social media – especially the thousands of illuminated Converse sneakers organised as a public art installation.

Converse Australia taps into the company’s rich history of creativity and provocation, and the ‘shoes are boring’ campaign, with a new project, SNEAKERS WOULD, that personifies the campaign, asking humans to ‘live in the moment’ like a Converse sneaker would. Timed to coincide with the launch of the (American) autumn 2014 All Star Sneaker Collection, Sneakers Would is a series of pop-up, surprise free live music shows across Melbourne, Sydney and NZ, with Australian artists The Vines, Bloods, Remi, Collarbones and more already signed on for shows in various cities, starting late October.

The cool clincher here is that tickets cannot be bought – instead, we’re invited to find them in unexpected places – receiving spur-of-the-moment invitations to drop what we’re doing to attend one of these one-of-a-kind live shows (“act spontaneously and live in the moment like a sneaker or carry on as normal like a shoe”). Head to the WEBSITE if you’d like to get involved.

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