What’s Going On Wrangler?

The What’s Going On? poster campaign ran alongside a television commercial which won a Cinema Gold award. The commercial, the concept for which was created by agency ,, made use of groundbreaking visual techniques to follow a day in the life of a pair of jeans. The soundtrack music, which was also titled ‘What’s going on?’ was written by Godley and Creme, one half of the pop group 10CC. Developed in a series of collage shots, the advertisement shows a picture of a family torn in two by the leading character, a young girl. She walks down the street in time to the music ‘What’s going on, what’s going on?’ The advert characterises adults such as parents and virtually everyone else as mundane and adults are all played by shop-style dummies. Dummy Mum and dummy Dad sit watching television and they are frozen, brain-dead statues. The main female character rips up a photo of her parents and smirks, surrounded by a gang of friends, who cheer her on.

The advert expressly separates the teenager from the stony, adult generation; adults are expressionless statues while teenagers move, have expressions and live happily in a teenage gang. The teenagers wear Wrangler T-shirts and jeans; they share similar hairstyles, they have their own culture, a new young, determined to ensure they express what they think. The styling of the characters in this campaign is typical of the pop-punk subculture, and echoes that of cult celebrities of the time, such as Madonna, in the film Desperately Seeking Susan. The poster image, which is made up of a montage design, conjures up three themes immediately; music, lifestyle and attitude. First of all the typography and ripped lay out is redolent of punk, particularly the album cover of Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols.

The montage also makes a profile of the customer, we can imagine the teenage girl, know what music she listens to, and come to understand something about her attitude and lifestyle.

“Collett Dickenson Pierce claimed that after the commercial ran, research showed that young people were more aware of Wrangler than of any other. The poster was an extension of the point of sale campaign in 1982 and ran for two years. The music won an award for the best commercial music and the campaign achieved three awards for the music, art direction and original concept. The second What’s Going On? poster was filmed in North London and took seven days to complete. The set was a swimming pool with a large face on its surface.

A young girl swimmer dived into the pool, and it appeared she was diving through the image of the face. The dive was perfect but she had to create a splash rather than a perfect dive. There was no computer technology to enhance the effect. All items on the poster were worn in the commercial and the images on the poster were part of the same shoot.” (ibid)

In 1985 Wrangler advertised in FHM and also in other youth magazines such as The Face. The advertisement featured a male model dressed like a human robot, which relates back to the company’s award winning What’s Going On? Campaign.

At this point a decision was taken to start using a new logo across Europe, printed on posters and T-shirts In place of the brand name, Wrangler. The Marketing department at Wrangler felt the ‘W’ logo was too tightly focused for the product range and so Dilley organized a committee with German, French and Italian graphic designers – a pan-European effort. The short listed designs included work by both a German graphic designer and a fashion designer from London. The final logo design was chosen from the London designer at a fraction of the cost the new logo. This change was less successful. It appeared to confused costumers used to the ‘W. logo and to the blue and yellow corporate colours.

The message of What’s Going On?was simple, unchallenging, and cartoon like; an unreal world but with real problems, filled with stereotypical characters. The message was rebellion, which separated youth from adults, but there was no spectrum to the emotion it aroused. You either bought the simple message, or you didn’t. This was the first, tentative reference to street culture. The characters were ill researched, and stereotypical, a parent’s view of teenagers, teenagers with nothing new to say.