A media platform set up by two young men in a London pub in 2015 today launches its first collaboration with luxury shoe brand Kurt Geiger.
The colourful campaign "Together, we move" involves a series of films and stills following a group of Londoners as they link up and explore their city, reconnecting with the spirit of friendship, community and celebration in the aftermath of the pandemic.
The creative brain behind the project is Guap, a youth-led media platform, founded in 2015 by Ibrahim Kamara and Jide Adetunji.
With its own in-house creative agency G-A (as well as online and print magazine and studio facilities) Kamara and Adetunji use Guap to discover, showcase and nurture emerging and underrepresented creatives and communities.
Kamara said: “We were two young black boys from southeast London with no money when we set up. If you had told us back then that what we were building would allow us to do things like this, we probably wouldn’t have believed you. This was a dream partnership for us.”
The pair were approached by Kurt Geiger initially on a trial basis, and are now launching the brand’s autumn/winter 2021 London campaign. They are also working on a Christmas campaign.
Kurt Geiger’s chief creative officer, Rebecca Farrar-Hockley, said: "Through this new collaboration with Guap to produce ‘Together, we move’, we wanted to empower our community, but in the process, we felt empowered back.
"The energy from Guap’s team of young, entrepreneurial creatives was palpable and inspiring from start to finish, and you can sense that same vivacity throughout the campaign’s collection of stills and films which bring our autumn/winter 21 collection to life. We’re excited for people to witness this fresh look for Kurt Geiger, which highlights our creativity and London roots in a brand new light.”
Kamara said: “We thought it would be a for a one-off campaign but we quickly realised that they were essentially looking to change the direction of their brand and their messaging and they wanted a young, exciting and well-connected company, like ours, to come in and help them along that process.”
When it came to the shoot itself, the duo worked hard to provide diversity both on and off the screen.
Kamara said: “This is one of our key missions. A lot of the time, young people aren’t in the positions of power on these types of thing and if there is any sort of diversity in age or gender, it’s on screen, whereas on our sets we have young people, for whom this might even be their first campaign, but we’ve seen their journey and seen their work and we know that they can do it, but they just might not have had anyone in the room to choose them.
“This game is based on nepotism and we are trying to defeat that nepotism. And now that we are getting our foot into these doors, we are making sure we are bringing in people from underrepresented communities who have the talent but aren’t getting the opportunities, and Kurt Geiger is a brand that really loves that part of it.”
The brief for the ad was to encapsulate the brand values of kindness and creativity and to make a statement underlining the label’s home – London.
Of the creative process, Adetunji said: “Whenever we get a brief, we have a brainstorming session with our own in-house creative team. We also bring other people from our wider network on board, people who might have some unique insights, and we came up with a really cool, colourful idea.
“We wanted to showcase, you know, the authenticity of London, key moments basically in and around the city, moments that we could all relate to you, like going to get a bite to eat, or going for a quick Tube journey with mates, or going for a quick bike ride, that kind of thing, but we wanted to give it a bit of an elevated look. We wanted to make sure that the styling was up there, that the energy was up there, the casting was up there.”
As well as hiring models, Guap used dancers and influencers from its own networks and directed, produced and edited the campaign.
Adetunji said: “If you’re model, you do this kind of stuff all the time, you might not even share it with your network. If you use people for whom these types of opportunity don’t come by every day, they’re more likely to embrace it and share it and it tends to make for a better feeling as well on set, where everyone you know is appreciative of the opportunity and everyone's working towards a common goal.
“We don't believe in diversity for diversity's sake, we believe in equality of opportunities, everyone should get an opportunity to come and showcase themselves.”
And it certainly sounds as if Guap practices what it preaches.
Kamara said: “Every single person that was on that set said that was the biggest thing they've ever worked on. One of the models, it was his first ever shoot. And his picture is being used on one of the main leaderboards, in store.
“There have been so many firsts in this campaign, making it impactful on people’s lives. They’ll be able to use this campaign to go on to do better things and I think that's one of the important things for us is that we have impact both on screen and off.
“That's why we use a lot of emerging talent because I think when you give opportunities to people who get opportunities all the time, it’s just another day for them. But when you do it with real people, and people who really deserve it, they’re gonna scream about it, their friends are gonna scream about it, we’'re gonna scream about it so the impact is greater and it’s a lot more authentic.”
Photo (left to right): Kamara, Farrar-Hockley and Adetunji