BERLIN — Hugo Boss revealed a new celebrity-studded marketing campaign for its Boss line, for summer 2023 on Wednesday, which will include a “see now, buy now” fashion show in Miami on March 15. The company also celebrated a year since it launched its new business strategy.
The latest household name to join the brand’s increasingly exhaustive list of household names is Gigi Hadid. The American model has worked for Hugo Boss previously, having opened a show at Milan Fashion Week in 2021, where the German brand launched its collaboration with U.S. activewear brand Russell Athletic.
“Gigi started modeling when she was just a toddler and, at 16, she was signed to a major agency,” Hugo Boss chief executive officer Daniel Grieder told WWD as to why the company chose Hadid to join its “be your own Boss,” campaign.”
The new Boss campaign also includes Naomi Campbell, Colombian singer Maluma, South Korean actor Lee Min-ho and Italian tennis player Matteo Berrettini. All of the individuals will be telling their own stories as part of the campaign, talking about obstacles overcome and choices made. “They neatly personify the fact that ‘Bosses’ aren’t born, they’re made,” a statement from the company explained.
Part of Hugo Boss’ new strategy and brand refresh, called “Claim 5” and first revealed in August 2021, then launched in January 2022, has been a heavy focus on social media. The brand, which had struggled with its main formal menswear line during the pandemic, has been breaking records with billions of impressions and vastly increased engagement.
But that has also involved a serious increase in marketing spend as well as more focus on a younger target audience whom, one imagines, may either not have the cash needed to become regular consumers or not be frequent formalwear buyers.
“Today relevance is the new legacy,” Grieder told WWD, when asked about the change in focus. He argued that it was crucial for Hugo Boss to become more relevant with a younger market.
“By 2030, Generation Z will make up the largest consumer segment worldwide,” he said. “[The campaigns] were designed to resonate with younger consumers, to turn them into fans. In the end, we want to attract new consumers, but we also want to keep our existing customers.”
Anyway, Grieder added, all that brand heat has translated into higher sales for Hugo Boss in 2022. Last week the company released preliminary figures for the fourth quarter of 2022 and the full year. Hugo Boss reported currency-adjusted sales growth of 27 percent, totaling 3.65 billion euros in 2022.
Although some analysts expressed concern about the overly optimistic mood at Hugo Boss, others from the likes of Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs noted that the results, to be confirmed in early March, had slightly exceeded market expectations.
Boss also presented its spring/summer 2022 collection in a see-now-buy-now format last February in the desert in Dubai.