The Clock Is Ticking for Diesel

In this era where a watch is more of a fashion accessory than a necessity, Diesel’s new campaign for Fossil watches aims to inject a sense of urgency about minutes ticking away.

The new Diesel Timeframes campaign, Days to Live, was created by Crispin Porter + Bogusky. It launched this week in the United States, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Benelux, and Korea. Its centerpiece is an iPhone app that takes the brand philosophy, “Time to be brave,” and focuses attention on how much time one has left to live.

“Most of time you look at a watch, and it’s about the time. We want you to look forward to how much time you have left,” said Matt Gooden, executive creative director, Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. “These watches are much larger than others, and we thought we needed something very provocative to do justice to the products.”

A video directed by Anthony Dickenson shows a montage of stylish people wasting time in a variety of ways. The video was created by digital production company Storythings as a series of stills in HTML5 to enable speedy loading time and rendering for a variety of digital devices.

At the end of the video, viewers can fill out an online questionnaire in order to find out how many more days they have to live. Questions involve everything from drug use and number of sex partners to a favorite color and how optimistic one is. IPhone owners can also download an alarm clock app that will wake them up each day with a reminder of the number of days they have left and an inspirational message encouraging them to live that day more bravely.

“Diesel describes their brand as very ironic. We got that across with the tone of the questions. The team had first put some very serious medical questions together with playful, stylish fashion imagery, and we felt that was quite powerful. There’s an irony to it,” Gooden said.

A teaser video for the campaign was posted on YouTube and promotional posts on the Diesel Facebook page began last Friday.

The campaign is supported with TV, online content, POS and social media internationally in key markets including: the USA, Japan, Italy, France, Germany, UK, Benelux, and Korea. Facebook posts and banners will run for the next month to drive traffic to the Days to Live mini-site.

The agency will continue to build functionality into the app over the coming year. It’s designed so that the skin can be updated to reflect design features of the Diesel line as new watches appear.

Diesel also hopes to build a community around the app in which members can inspire each other to live more bravely.