It’s been just over a year since the first meeting with founder Martina Offeh and what feels like endless sessions since that day, it all resulted into one big push campaign for ASHES AND SOIL.
After a great session on thought leadership with the whole team in August it was time to make a move on project “Introspection” which entailed quite a few different elements. From a major Pop-up store, a capsule collection with the slogan “We are all intertwined”, to email newsletters and a card game/filter entitled “The art of meaningful conversation” .
Besides overseeing all marketing efforts and consulting on all of the following things, my main focus was to connect the dots and combine the marketing content to drive engagement and awareness. Another priority was ensuring that communication is executed effectively and on brand, as well as implementing creative ideas to get the most out of the initiatives planned overall. Here’s a little breakdown of the whole campaign:

ASHES AND SOIL - Pop-up Store
Having decided to end the year with a bang, in December the very first pop-up store was opened in Hamburg where their journey and brand was birthed, an amazing location in the heart of the city. Designed into a minimalistic space, people were able to shop the debut collection, get in touch with the team and experience a place of interaction and introspection. Getting the most out of the store physically and driving actual traffic to the store with engaging campaigns was my main involvement. This was received with great euphoria and although we had to cut it short due to pandemic regulations it was a great success and an eye opener into future possibilities.

Capsule Collection - “We are all intertwined”
This first ‘Capsule Collection’ aimed to inspire questions and open up space to look deeper into someone else’s soul, not to spot our differences, but to explore our similarities. In collaboration with Art Director Luca Jahn using his bold prints and graphics, it consists of 5 premium ready to wear essential pieces, incorporating two of the stories from the momentum collection ‘Introspection’. In addition we also did something that was always on my bucket list, which is to give back and work with a charity. 'On The Move e.V.' - a charity that furthers brain awareness activities all over the world and opened the first holistic Center for Mental Health, including vocational skills training and rehabilitation programs, in Ghana - West Africa.

The team came up with the great initiative called #GiftingHope, by using a discount code customers not only donated 5% of the proceeds into a fund to support vocational training, but also got 15% off all items on the website themselves. This is major when you think of the brand values and creating with purpose.⁠

Instagram Filter - “The art of meaningful conversation”
The team had originally come up with a physical card game that aims to spark deeper level conversations, uncover behaviour patterns and stimulate self-reflection. I was pulled in to find a way to make that happen efficiently in the midst of a pandemic where people can’t really get together to utilise the game to its full potential. My idea was to take the card game and digitalise it, simply present it in the form of a filter on social media to creatively engage with a community and encourage dialogue amongst users. The filter is available on the ASHES AND SOIL instagram page so please feel free to try it out and don’t forget to tag @ashesandsoil when posting in your stories.

With so many things having happened this year it was really a new level of challenge to stay committed, motivated and focused on the task at hand, nonetheless we pulled through and I have to say that this project became a personal favourite and made me feel grateful and even more certain about the space I occupy.

Shop the collection on www.ashesandsoil.com & sign up to the newsletter here.