Who Is Behind Some of The Most Iconic Ad Campaigns in History? Glad You Asked...
Meet Trey Laird, the creative genius behind ad campaigns for clients like Calvin Klein, Vera Wang, Tommy Hilfiger, DKNY, Tiffany & Co., Tom Ford, (Hugo) Boss, and even... Cho & Tell!
If you spend way too much time on Instagram – like I admittedly do – you may have noticed a certain fashion ad campaign flooding the zone late last week.
Suddenly, this...
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
Was...
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
Everywhere.
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
Even @dudewithsign got involved.
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
In the first 48 hours, the new ad campaign for the reimagined BOSS (formerly Hugo Boss) is said to have garnered billions of impressions.
The man behind these viral ads is my friend, Trey Laird.
Photo credit: Mark Seliger
Laird is a legend in fashion – known for creating some of the industry’s buzziest campaigns.
For Tom Ford.
Tommy Hilfiger.
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
Tiffany & Co.
Photo credit: Cass Bird
And as a big favor to me, Trey created my logo for Cho & Tell.
During the pandemic, he took a hiatus from fashion to focus on fitness – specifically, his lifestyle brand, AARMY – think of it as a mashup of SoulCycle and Headspace.
Photo courtesy: Trey Laird
But BOSS drew him back to fashion and now he’s busier than ever.
He just shot a campaign for Michael Kors. There's his ongoing work with Tommy Hilfiger. And his newest client is Aman Resorts.
Want to hire him? Look him up. His new company is called – you heard it here first – TEAM LAIRD.
“THAT’S A BOSS MOVE”
ALINA CHO: So, I want to talk about BOSS.
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
It's not Hugo Boss anymore, right?
TREY LAIRD: Now, it's just BOSS. We dropped the Hugo. They have a second line, like a younger jeans line, that's now only called Hugo.
ALINA CHO: Right, I saw that. I feel like in the past week, just scrolling through my Instagram, all of a sudden, all I saw was BOSS everywhere.
TREY LAIRD: That's what I do.
ALINA CHO: That is what you do. So, what was the strategy? Because Hugo Boss needed a rebranding. CEO Daniel Grieder said himself it was a little dusty, and truthfully, it was.
TREY LAIRD: Yeah. I mean, it had this big awareness. Obviously, everybody knows that brand, but you don't really think about it so much. And when the CEO asked me about it, I immediately felt like the whole thing to me is always about relevance. And I think they had this awareness, but they didn't have any relevance.
ALINA CHO: Exactly.
TREY LAIRD: I just kept thinking, you know what's so crazy, is calling someone a boss or referring to somebody as a boss, it's part of the cultural lingo.
ALINA CHO: Totally.
TREY LAIRD: It's such a badass thing. Like, “She's a total boss. That's a boss move.”
ALINA CHO: It’s surprising that nobody ever took advantage of that language.
TREY LAIRD: That's what I thought. To me, it was the most obvious thing, but they had never done it. And so, you had Hugo Boss, the men's suiting brand from the ‘90s or whatever. And then you have everybody from Beyoncé to Michelle Obama saying, “She's a total boss.”
ALINA CHO: Right.
TREY LAIRD: I just felt like if they could align themselves with the emotional meaning that it has in culture — it's such a reverential, powerful, exciting, culturally relevant term — if they could connect those dots and then start to re-envision how their product looks and how their store looks and how their marketing looks, all of a sudden, they could have a relevant voice.
ALINA CHO: Like I said, all of a sudden, it was everywhere, and I started to feel left out. I was like, “Wait a minute, how come I don't have a sweatshirt?”
Photo credit: Mikael Jansson
But I guess that’s the idea, right?
TREY LAIRD: Yeah, it is. I mean, there are people who would never have even thought about Hugo Boss. It was just this menswear brand. Don't hate it. Don't love it. Just know of it. And now it's on the radar.
ALINA CHO: So, does this count as your comeback campaign?
TREY LAIRD: I guess! So, through the pandemic, to be able to kind-of step back and take a pause, I think I re-realized what my voice and what my skill is.
ALINA CHO: You love working for someone who has a strong vision.
TREY LAIRD: Give me a Tom Ford any day of the week.
Lady Gaga for Tom Ford, Photo Credit: Nick Knight
“I like this. I don’t like that. I want pink. I hate red.” That, I love. Somebody who is wishy-washy, “I don’t know. What do you think?”
ALINA CHO: Why?
TREY LAIRD: I can only do a really great job for someone who is clear on who they are. I can’t tell them who they are. I can help bring it out of them and I can help communicate it with the world. You also have to figure out what’s relevant in the world. Tommy [Hilfiger] is brilliant at that. Tommy always reinvents. If you’re only stuck in your own bubble and you’re not aware of the world around you, you’re only really talking to yourself.
AND THEN, THERE’S HIS OTHER JOB
ALINA CHO: Let’s talk about AARMY.
Photo courtesy: Trey Laird
You have no background in fitness. I mean, WTF, Trey? What is AARMY and why?
TREY LAIRD: Well, I can answer that in several different ways. You know I've spent my whole career building brands for other people. Like, the biggest brands in the world. I love it, and I still do that. But I always thought…
ALINA CHO: “I’ve got a brand in me.”
TREY LAIRD: Yeah, exactly. So, then I had to really think about, “Okay, what do I really love?” Like I don't want to do a jeans brand or whatever.
ALINA CHO: Yeah, I mean you live fashion.
TREY LAIRD: Yeah, I live that, and I love that. But I really started getting into fitness ten years ago, and it became a really important part of my life.
ALINA CHO: So, you started spinning, and you went to SoulCycle?
TREY LAIRD: I went to SoulCycle, and then I started training with this guy who was a SoulCycle instructor, Akin Akman, who's now my partner here in AARMY. And it was like nothing I'd ever done before.
ALINA CHO: So, it was different from SoulCycle.
TREY LAIRD: It was about mental conditioning as well as physical.
ALINA CHO: And so, what does that mean?
TREY LAIRD: It's training your mind to be as strong as your body. Like this last couple of years, it doesn't really matter how fit you are physically. If you can't find that resilience, when you're faced with a challenge, figure out how you're going to tackle it, that’s really what you have to build.
ALINA CHO: But how does that manifest itself in a class at AARMY?
TREY LAIRD: It's as much about storytelling [as it is about fitness]. We do these thematic series that are 30 days long on our digital app. [We had] one called All In and it's really about whatever you commit to in your life, you have to fully commit to it.
ALINA CHO: So, you're riding, but you're also listening?
TREY LAIRD: Yeah, and there's bootcamp [training]. There's a stretch session. There are standalone inspiration sessions. And it's really powerful. For instance, we did something called Invisible Forces, and it was about the things that we all have in our lives that are really important, but you can't touch them. Like love, courage, hope. And we all need it, but you can't — it's not physical.
ALINA CHO: Right.
TREY LAIRD: We can't live without it. So, how do you value that, and remember it, and appreciate it?
ALINA CHO: And how do you take it in?
TREY LAIRD: So, sometimes when you're holding a plank for eight minutes and you want to give up, and everything in your body's telling you to give up, when you're in that moment and you're hearing that, you think, “Okay, well, I’m going to stick with it.”
ALINA CHO: So much of it is mental.
Photo courtesy: Trey Laird
TREY LAIRD: It is. And the way this all came about is, Akin was a tennis prodigy. [When he was young], he was sent to what was then the Bollettieri Tennis Academy.
ALINA CHO: The biggest.
TREY LAIRD: Yeah, it’s now IMG. So, you know, all those kids train to be pro tennis players, they're all gifted.
ALINA CHO: So, what separates the good from the great?
TREY LAIRD: Yeah, how is a Roger [Federer] or a Rafa [Nadal] different from the other ten we don't remember? It's the mental. 100 percent. So, his whole thing was, why can't I start training real people?
ALINA CHO: Not just tennis prodigies.
TREY LAIRD: Not just elite kids at elite academies. But what about moms, and bankers, and lawyers, and dads, and creative directors and journalists?
ALINA CHO: Everyone can benefit. What’s your goal with AARMY?
TREY LAIRD: We always wanted to build it as a lifestyle brand rooted in this fitness mindset, but really think of it as a true brand, which is the way I know how to build things. I never wanted to just launch a workout app; I think it's too one dimensional. Once you subscribe, not literally subscribe, but you invest in something personally, I think then, all of a sudden, you want to live in it and you want to wear the clothes.
Photo courtesy: Trey Laird
Because all of a sudden, it's your uniform. And eventually, you want to have the candle. And eventually, you want to have the clean, sweat-inspired grooming products and all the different, maybe nutrition, things.
ALINA CHO: So, like you’ve done for so many others, now, you’re building your own world.
TREY LAIRD: We're building a world, and this is just the very, very start.
*Cover photo credit: Peter Lindbergh