Levi's Created Casual Friday
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A story about how Levi's created the concept of "Casual Friday" through a clever marketing campaign to sell more Dockers khakis.
"In the 1960s in Hawaii, it started becoming common at one hotel where employees were allowed to wear Hawaiian shirts to work on Friday. Up until the late 80s/early 90s, virtually everyone wore suits to work all the time.
Levi's had just launched Dockers khaki pants, but people considered khakis too casual for work. So this marketing executive at Levi's had a brilliant idea - they printed 40,000 pamphlets explaining to HR professionals about this new thing called 'business casual' and 'casual Friday.' It was an 8-page pamphlet with the rules of this new tradition.
While it didn't explicitly promote Levi's or Dockers, all the photos showed people wearing jeans with Levi's logos or khakis that were clearly Dockers. They even created an HR hotline where companies could call to ask questions about dress code protocols.
The campaign took off and casual Friday officially became a thing. It shaped culture and helped revive the American apparel industry. People started buying Dockers and Levi's because of this movement. It was brilliant marketing - they found a tradition, blew it up, and just happened to have the perfect products to sell alongside it."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.