AM Free Gear Campaign

AmericanMuscle ran another free gift campaign this month where the customer could choose one of eight apparel items if they spent over the set threshold ($150). The graphic designers meet up to discuss the monthly campaigns and bring inspiration to the table. I look at a lot of different sites for inspiration including Rip Curl, Backcountry, The Fasthouse, Fox Racing, Burton, Under Armour, Icon, FMF Exhaust and Roxy to name a few. Pretty much any sort of variety of motorsports, action sports or outdoors-related business are fair game to pull inspiration. With this being an apparel project, I no doubt focused a lot of Fox Racing's web banners and email graphics. I was really drawn to the image below that Fox used as a homepage banner on their site:

I really liked the split imagery, The Fasthouse uses this method a lot as well with their web banners throughout their site. With this project I was finally able to execute this look.

One of our challenges that the designers face is showing giveaway items creatively while also showing the vehicle. For example, this apparel promo would perform best, based on previous testing, with a Mustang also in the creative. With that said, in the past we've incorporated models and Mustangs in shots, and they just haven't performed as great as one would predict. I believed this Fox example would prove to be the most successful blend of showing the apparel and also showing a lifestyle of a mustang.  My team agreed, as did the Marketing department, and soon enough the concept was approved.

The next step was to submit a photography request so they could order the eight apparel items for a custom shoot. I provided this example and some additional apparel examples of things I was looking for. Below are the examples I included for the shoot:

The top image is what I envisioned for the on-site graphics. The second image was what another designer brought to our monthly inspirational meeting. I planned to use an image similar to this with tools for the email creative. The goal with the email was to be more mysterious and have the customer guessing what the "free gift" could possibly be. The in-house photographer took a variety of shots based on these examples. The lifestyle portion of the web banner concept would just be pulling from our current in-house photography library on our server.

Throughout the process there were some copy adjustments, but overall the concept was really well received. Below is one of the on-site desktop graphics featuring imagery very similar to the initial concept proposed:

For email, we also ended up going with the split design and ran a copy A/B test. I used a more vague photo of the apparel including the tools. Below are the A/B versions of an email a-spot:

I was really happy with the end result of this project. It's interesting to see how similar the initial concept is with the final creative, yet has its own feel. Below are the rest of the generational lifestyles. This project included desktop and mobile site graphics as well as email a-spot and b-spots.