DIESEL | ENJOY BEFORE RETURNING | 2020
Turning an Annual Loss of One Trillion Six Hundred Billion Yen into a Celebration / DIESEL "ENJOY BEFORE RETURNING"
Buy clothes, wear them, return them, get your money back. This practice, known as "wardrobing," costs the fashion industry an estimated $15 billion a year. DIESEL didn't try to crack down on it. Instead, they openly encouraged it.
The problem
According to the National Retail Federation, about 11% of retailers' annual sales get returned, and an estimated 8% of those are fraudulent returns. Many brands responded by suspecting their customers and tightening their return policies.
The insight
If you can't stop it, you might as well make it fun. DIESEL decided not to treat wardrobing as something shameful, but as simply normal, turning it into a rallying cry: ENJOY BEFORE RETURNING. Rather than suspecting customers, the idea was to embrace what they were actually doing anyway.
The idea
The wording of the return policy itself became the ad copy. As a narrator recites the rules—like "return items with tags attached, in good condition"—almost like a song, the models enjoy a full night out while keeping their tags on. A woman eats dinner covered in napkins, and customers proudly show off their tags. The film even shows someone ironing a wrinkled paper tag before heading out for the night.
What happened
The campaign rolled out alongside fashion weeks around the world, and DIESEL's parties only let in people who had their tags showing. This ad, built around the assumption that items would be returned, became the first Titanium Lion ever awarded at Cannes Lions.
Afterthought
Instead of making customers the enemy, they made them allies. Rather than forcing people to follow the rules, they decided to play along with them. They created a world where wardrobing makes you feel proud instead of guilty. No wonder it won a Titanium Lion.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2020
