brand-e

By Hugh Jordan. Doing denim. Talking to Paul Graham, founder of Anomaly UK, you could be forgiven for thinking the recession had never happened. His agency has grown from being a four-person outfit six months ago to one now employing over 30 people.
The agency’s latest offering is Be Stupid, a very high-profile brand platform devised for Diesel.
“[Diesel] asked us to go and see them in Italy – originally it was to produce some visual content,” Graham explains. “But what we ended up coming back with was a book, bound in denim that lays out the philosophy of Be Stupid – it has become the manifesto for Diesel’s Be Stupid campaign.”
So, what is Be Stupid?
“It’s about not being afraid to fail, making brave choices and wanting to live life to the full,” says Graham. “Over the last few years, Diesel’s message and image has become more fragmented. There is a whole generation who don’t really know what Diesel stands for. That’s what we wanted to address with Be Stupid.”
Graham credits the clothing manufacturer with having the balls and vision – dare we say it, the ‘stupidity’ – to go with Anomaly’s brand overhaul.
Diesel has launched a catalogue manifesto in-store, as well as online, outlining the new philosophy. Posters, harking back to the brand’s anarchic, maverick 90s style have been posted and a music video, inspired by Jean Luc Goddard’s Bande A Part, has been released on the Net.
The music video acts as a catalogue, an idea previously used by Uniqlo. If viewers like an item of clothing featured in the video they click on it and are directed through to Diesel’s website. More original, though, is how the video was created.
Rather than paying designers, dancers, musicians and directors up-front, Anomaly organised a value-exchange. Artists put in their time and talent in return for publicity and, in some cases, a share of the profits. For Josep Yorto, the musician whose track is featured on the advert this share could potentially be very healthy indeed.
In typically opportunistic fashion, Anomaly created its own record label, Anomaly Music Group, signing Yorto up as its first artist. Be Stupid’s philosophy might have been created with Diesel in mind but it seems equally applicable to the way Anomaly goes about its business.
So, is Stupidity the secret of Anomaly’s success?
“Stupid belongs to Diesel,” says Graham. “I don’t know what’s going to come next and that’s the way it should be. You just have to point forward, have faith it what you’re doing, let things happen organically and be opportunistic… all of that rolled into one.”