How Freitag keeps its cool: A look inside the brand’s less-than-conventional approach to creative campaigns

It’s Nice That (INT): I’d like to start with the brand’s origin story. I feel like Freitag has a very cool one! For readers that might not know, could you outline how the Freitag brothers started a company making bags out of old truck tarp back in 1993?

Thomas Wakeford (TW): Yes, it certainly began with quite a spontaneous idea. When the Freitag brothers started out in 1993 they were both studying graphic design and they were on the search for a robust, water repellent bag that they could use to take their work from their house to the studio, but they couldn’t find one. The story is that they got quite inspired by all of the multicoloured, heavy traffic that rumbled through Zurich, seeing these trucks drive by their window everyday, and decided to test out making a very solid, durable bag from their tarp.

They then deconstructed their bikes and made use of an inner tube to add to the design – which became this very famous bike binding, and now, quite an iconic part of the bag. Looking into repurposing these kinds of materials further, they thought more about the details that were attached to these trucks, and thought of the seat belt (which you wear across the body anyway) as having a lot of potential to become the bag’s strap.

The whole production process started out at home and was very DIY – they were washing tarp in their bathtub and built the very first bags in their living room with just a sewing machine. I think the nice thing about Freitag’s start, in a sense, is that it was very much all about the product. At the start, Marcus and Daniel’s business ambitions were obviously very small – the bag was a personal and functional design reaction to their daily life and that is a sentiment that is really still true to the brand today.

INT: Yes I love that. I know they first started selling them to friends at art school who were like “That bag’s so cool, can you make me one too?” It’s really nice that it started as this personal solution that expanded into something more.

Whilst we’re talking about the early days I’m curious to hear about what the first ever Freitag campaign looked like?

TW: It’s funny we were having lunch with Marcus yesterday and we asked him about this and the first thing that came to mind as a campaign of sorts – beyond just capturing images of the bags between them and their friends in the early days – was for a product called the F37 Renegade, which was a travel bag that we no longer sell, but they’re really nice. It’s this really big bag that you can wear cross body, but you can also unzip and it can turn into a tote on one side and a smaller crossbody on the other.

The founders decided to feature themselves in the campaign for the bag and the concept was based on them being the kind of ironic chairmen of the brand and running away to Japan on a fake business trip. They took a photographer called Noah Flume along with them and he documented their journey in this humorous, sort-of faux documentary style. What they did to make the pictures from this trip a little bit more Freitag, however, was zip themselves up in sleeping bags with just their heads poking out – in every shot, whether it was next to a plane, a train station or in the middle of a Tokyo street. So they looked like these worm creatures, I almost want to say, but it brought this kind of humour and lightheartedness to it. You had this person standing in a sleeping bag with the actual bag next to them, which was quite ridiculous but it created such a strong image and that’s exactly the spirit we’re still trying to translate in our campaigns now.

Funnily enough, we actually half referenced that campaign recently when we did a collaboration with Dover Street Market Ginza back in March. We didn’t use the sleeping bags this time, but we found these repurposed firehose mannequins that they use in Japan to do vehicle testing and first aid stuff. If you look on our Instagram, we placed them all around Tokyo – the idea was that they were delivering the bags from our Ginza store to the Ginza Dover Street Market store. We took loads of pictures of these mannequins holding the bags in different situations all over the city which was fun but also quite strange and eye catching.

INT: That’s so funny, I think the spirit of that early campaign really translates into everything you’ve done to date. Do you think the brand’s origins of upcycling and repurposing materials for new means has somehow influenced its approach to marketing and creative direction since the beginning too?

TW: Yes definitely, that circular process – what we call from truck to bag – is a journey that really informs everything we do at Freitag. It’s really the heart of our brand. It defines our story and I think it’s the contrast between these raw repurposed, industrial, found materials and this fun, distinctly Swiss, almost Dada-esque humour that I think really makes Freitag, Freitag.

The brand’s core creative philosophy is taking something that already exists and re-contextualising it into something new. That applies to whether it’s a truck or bag or a bike. It also kind of shapes a conceptual approach because it can be taking an absurd cliche or a witty observation or even a small irritation in everyday life and giving it a new life and a new context, whether that takes the form of a product or an idea.

INT: I wanted to ask you a bit more about that process, to get more of a glimpse behind the creation of your campaigns. I’m sure each is quite different and presents different challenges, but how do you take things all the way from ideas to realisation each time there is a new product launch?

TW: Each campaign really starts with the bag: its function, the user we envision wearing it etc, and sometimes the idea can be really clear from the start. Even as we are developing new products, we are already thinking about the creative campaigns around them. But like you said there are no clear rules and each launch is different. We always want to prioritise something that’s really visually exciting.

For example, with the campaign for the Laura Bag, which we launched back in February now, we just really went with the idea of the bag being called Laura and we cast as many Lauras as possible for the shoot and sort of envisioned all these different Lauras arriving at their workday at Freitag, stopping at the lift on their way in, which is on our first floor, and this idea informed the campaign shoot.

INT: I loved that campaign!

INT: I really wanted to talk about the casting of your campaigns. Each Freitag bag is completely unique and this idea is a cornerstone of the brand. For me this really draws a parallel with the uniqueness of the people behind Freitag. Something I have always loved about your campaigns is how diverse the casting is – why has it been important to represent so many different types of personalities and people through the brand’s campaigns both young and old?

TW: Yes, that uniqueness found in the products and the people that use them is really key for us. One of our in-house mottos is that every bag is as unique as you. I think we really have a commitment to being a democratic brand. Recently a lot of our products have resonated with Gen Z, but we also have a lot of customers that have been very loyal to us for the last 30 years and we don’t want to define who we are by a certain demographic, age, personality type or anything like that.

We are very lucky to have a really loyal community and a lot of our customers actually feature in our campaigns. We very rarely use models. We often ask shop staff or people that work in our head office or friends or friends of friends to feature in our campaigns. Occasionally we do cast models, but not in a traditional way – we just might reach out to someone here and there to be in a particular campaign because they fit a certain thing we might be looking for.

INT: That’s so interesting that the people in the campaigns are often part of Freitag!

TW: I think we just want things to feel really honest and represent real, everyday people. I have always liked the idea that we design bags for everyone and our casting is a very simplified way of saying that through our visual approach.

INT: Definitely. The campaigns always bring a sense of timelessness to the product too, whilst still making the bags feel contemporary and exciting. Your recent Lucky Trucking Charms campaign sort of tapped into the trinket trend that’s captivated Gen Z, which might be an example of how you continue to appeal to younger audiences whilst also keeping old-time fans of the brand on board. How do you balance having a cross-generational appeal?

TW: That’s a good question and a tough one to answer directly. I think timelessness, or creating a feeling of timelessness whether that’s in campaigns or projects, is hard to engineer. I think brands have to find ways to adapt to current culture and be relevant in current culture, which can often appeal to younger people more, but our focus at Freitag also remains on having longevity and appealing to everyone.

I think the charms were an interesting example because, from a product point of view, we need to find new ways to interpret our brand story and these charms are obviously a bit more of a trend that’s happening now, but when you do it in the kind of industrial materials we use, it can maybe feel quite raw and honest and, well, very Freitag. All our charms are made from production waste and leftovers from our bags too, so this actually became a fun solution for circular thinking and using waste as a resource again.

INT: Yes, you definitely put your own stamp on that. It’s also kind of creating another access point to the brand and expanding the scale of products that you sell, which is nice.

TW: 100 per cent. Yeah it’s really true. We’re also constantly looking at how we diversify our portfolio and offer these entry-level products, which are fun and have this kind of edge and personality to them whilst still having a sustainable story. The Lucky Trucking charms offer something that people can put on anything really. Just the other day I saw someone walking around Zurich with a Birkin bag that had some Freitag charms on it!

INT: Amazing, that’s so funny!