Vans Back to School 2025
The Program • Marketing Design & Brand Strategy
MY ROLE
Designer, Art Direction support
TEAM
AD Alyson Agemy, Ari Vance-Borland; Designers Kenny Baughman, Andrew Johnson; Writer Mike Shymanski; Lifecycle Strategist Priscilla Smart
TIMELINE
May - September 2025
OVERVIEW
Vans asked my team at The Program to revamp one of their biggest seasonal moments, Back to School. Rather than relying on promotional campaigns in a highly competitive season, we found opportunities to drive retention through narrative and channel strategy. We shifted our approach into an omnichannel play with a phased content strategy for different regions’ Back to School moments to build stronger consumer relationships.
As a designer, I was focused on Retention and Paid comms. I ensured that the channels I led worked in lockstep with dotcom to provide a seamless shopping experience for parents, teens, and young adults looking for their first day fits.
Synchronicity in content and design strategy across dotcom, paid social, and email.
Day One Ready
We started by working on the strategy for the Back to School email and SMS sends. We laid out a direction for the content, the photography, and the messaging. We also established a broad timeline for the order the sends would go out. As the sole designer for Retention comms, I established a design library, slide templates, and infographic and color styling.
From sketches to slides. We developed this phase map that Vans loved and has requested us to incorporate into future campaign planning.
Head Start on School
With a 72 hour turnaround, all the designers and design strategists on the Vans workstream at The Program came together to jam on the creative approach. Our proposed creative approach involved elevated usage of layered photography to convey a vibrant youthful narrative.
Back To School Schedule
To streamline and scale more effectively, we organized and categorized all our planned sends for the summer. Each email connected back to a content type, and that informed my creative strategy and production. I also created modular content blocks to reinforce product value and seasonal relevance that could be reused and remixed across multiple emails.
We developed four “consumer muses” based on demographics and shopping affinities that layered into the broader campaign calendar, leaned into persona-driven storytelling. Each email send was curated for a specific audience, which informed my design decisions and product choices.
For Him
For Kids
Product-focused
Using on-body imagery and product detail photography, I created different compositions for hero GIF images to keep sends fresh from June to September.
Stylin’ All Year Long
Through our phased content strategy based on regional Back to School timing and our elevated narrative-forward omni-channel design thinking, we reframed the Vans’ Back to School campaign from simply pushing sale to Vans showing up as a trusted style partner for people navigating one of the biggest shopping moments.
Below are examples of the 58 email, paid social, and MMS assets that composed the cohesive campaign I helped develop.
