by MICHELLE KIM, Audrey Magazine
The American outdoor product company The North Face, Inc. was initially designed for outdoor sporting goods. Their products deliver both functionality and style. However, for South Koreans, it means something else.
The North Face has gained wide-spread popularity among South Korean students, and is even seen as a fashionable “uniform.” Specific types of jackets, mainly the “puff jacket” and the “rain jacket,” are known to be the most popular designs that South Korean students purchase.
Unfortunately, all this popularity has also attracted negative attention as well. Students have found that many of them are being judged and stereotyped by their clothing choices. When it comes to The North Face, some student claim that wearing puff jackets makes others believe they are part of a gang.
For the sake of staying away from negative stereotypes, some students have stopped purchasing The North Face jackets. To counter this, the company has had to make some creative moves.
A Korean advertising agency working with The North Face created a prank for customers visiting the company’s pop-up store in South Korea through a promotion called, “Never Stop Exploring.”
A video of the prank shows customers casually shopping until the employees run out of the store, locking the customer inside. Suddenly, the floor shifts and begins disappearing beneath the customer, leaving them no choice but to use the rock-climbing wall to avoid the fall. The shopper are then told they have 30 seconds to jump and grab a jacket which suddenly dangles from the ceiling.
Not only did The North Face raise the spirits of their customers by making them jump and retrieve a free jacket, the promotion also represents the proper image of the company.
The viral video was published on September 30, 2014 and has over 4,530,000 views.
This story was originally posted on Audrey Magazine.
