Submitted by Tanke - Creative Influencer MarketingAgency IPI Score 16/100

Calvin Klein CK Obsessed fragrance launch influence strategy

Influencer Marketing

Tanke built an influence strategy for Calvin Klein around the relaunch of its CK Obsessed fragrances, working with nine influencers who reached 785k followers.

31content pieces
31contenus créés
785kfollowers reach
9influencers

Case in 60 seconds

Calvin Klein decided to reinterpret the CK Obsessed perfume it had created in the 1990s, so the launch had to introduce a new fragrance while carrying an emblematic name that already meant something to the market.

The campaign appears to turn on the idea that obsession reads as personal rather than romantic for a contemporary audience, because Tanke asked its influencers to stage obsessions such as art, travel and attachment to a place alongside love.

Tanke's creative team decided to hand the CK Obsessed universe and the cult 1993 Mario Sorrenti photographs to influencers to appropriate, so the relaunch was modernised through reinterpretation rather than through restatement of the archive.

Nine influencers took ownership of the CK Obsessed universe and the Mario Sorrenti images from 1993, each staging a different obsession such as love, art, the desire to discover the world or attachment to a place, producing 31 contenus créés; five are credited as @fadela, @dressingleeloo, @hxlloworld, @jaimetoutcheztoi and @merystache.

Tanke reports 785 k followers reach, 9 influenceurs and 31 contenus créés for the launch, with no sales, engagement or brand measure published alongside those three figures.

Strategy Breakdown

A perfume imagined in the 1990s carries a meaning of passion fixed to that decade, so Tanke had to reconcile the emblematic Sorrenti imagery with a present-day reading of obsession rather than choose between them.
Fragrance cannot be demonstrated in a photograph, which is why the page describes the work as staging obsessions and appropriating an existing visual universe rather than showing the product in use.
Calvin Klein supplied the reinterpreted CK Obsessed fragrances and the 1993 Sorrenti photographs as the material the influencers worked from, and the page describes the brand as having challenged Tanke to build the influence strategy.
Based on the available evidence, the brief assumed that an audience recognises obsession more readily in an ordinary attachment, to a place or to a practice, than in the romantic register the original campaign used.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • photos

Partners

  • Tanke

Creator role

  • @dressingleeloo — creator
  • @fadela — creator
  • @hxlloworld — creator
  • @jaimetoutcheztoi — creator
  • @merystache — creator
  • 9 influenceurs
  • neufs influenceurs
  • nine influencers

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
Content Pieces31 content pieces
Contenus CrééS31 contenus créés
Followers Reach785k followers reach
Influencers9 influencers
Influenceurs9 influenceurs

Why Tanke's strategy worked

  1. 1

    An archive image set can be given to creators as material to inhabit rather than as a reference to copy, which lets a relaunch stay recognisable while the interpretation of it changes hands.

  2. 2

    Splitting a single brand idea into separate personal themes gives each creator a distinct brief within one campaign, which suggests why nine participants could produce 31 contenus créés without repeating each other.

Related Case studies