Vanish, a Reckitt-owned garment care brand, has teamed up with Europe’s biggest gamers and streamers to encourage consumers to re-wear clothes and raise awareness of clothing waste.
The #ReSkinChallenge campaign sees the brand expand its #ReWear message into the world of gaming, hacking the virtual ‘fast fashion’ trend to drive awareness of the real-life clothing crisis in new gaming audiences.
High-profile gamers including CaptainPuffy, ShivFPS, FreyzPlayz and fifakillvizualz – with a combined total of 4.4 million Twitch subscribers – uncharacteristically reverted to a basic, default gaming character ‘skin’ for a whole week as part of the campaign. Just like in real life, these skins are reportedly ‘at the mercy of the latest trends’, typically becoming obsolete within a few months. The pro-gamers also wore the same physical outfit on their streams for the duration of the challenge, starting conversations among their fans online.
The brand eventually revealed its intentions to the gaming community – to encourage gamers to re-wear their clothes – both in-game, and in real life. As part of the campaign, each time a #ReSkinChallenge stream is shared Vanish will donate £20 to Oxfam.
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The innovative activation, created by Havas London and Havas Play with PR from One Green Bean, follows on from research that found that in the UK 350,000 tonnes of clothing are thrown away each year.
“The environmental impact of our culture of extreme disposability is becoming just as prevalent in the virtual world as in real life – reinforcing the very behaviour that sees millions of perfectly good items of clothing thrown into landfill every year. At Vanish, our mission is to help clothes live longer – and the #ReSkinChallenge represents an innovative, playful way to land our #Rewear message, credibly, with new and engaged communities,” Reckitt chief marketing and digital officer Cigdem Kurtulus said.
Havas London creative partner and Reckitt global executive creative director, Elliot Harris, added: “By partnering with some of Europe’s biggest streamers – starting conversations within their hyper-engaged communities in a smart, unobtrusive and organic way – we are tapping into virtual fandom to drive important, real-world change. Gamers are a completely new audience for Vanish’s #Rewear message, and given their relative youth, will be a crucial one in consigning unnecessary clothing waste to the bin – for good.”
