Apex Footwear Limited Maverick Bets on Real People to Relaunch a Brand
Free To Be is a 2021 fashion and lifestyle campaign created by Dhaka-based agency Lie to Eye for Apex Footwear Limited's Maverick brand, launched in Bangladesh in November 2021, built entirely around the idea that authentic self-expression is more persuasive than celebrity endorsement.
Maverick occupies a specific position within the Apex Footwear Limited portfolio: a lifestyle-oriented sub-brand targeting younger Bangladeshi consumers who respond to cultural identity over aspirational fantasy. The Free To Be campaign was designed to re-establish that positioning from the ground up, according to Clapboard's editorial review of the campaign brief. Rather than celebrating a curated ideal of cool, the campaign celebrated the everyday maverick — individuals already living by their own rules across different walks of Bangladeshi life.
The campaign launched in Bangladesh in November 2021 across a deliberately broad channel mix. The primary asset was a launch audiovisual film, amplified through digital platforms, press, billboards, in-store activations, and giant display screenings. On social media, the campaign extended into lifestyle photoshoots, product videos, and a dedicated editorial series titled Mavericks of Bangladesh, abbreviated as MOB, which profiled three individuals whose lives embodied the maverick mindset. The campaign was submitted to the global advertising archive Ads of the World by Pulak Das, Head of Art at Lie to Eye, with an archive timestamp of November 21, 2021, according to adsoftheworld.com.
The campaign's core ambition, as documented on the Ads of the World archive, was twofold: to celebrate those already living freely and to encourage others who had not yet granted themselves that permission. In the Bangladesh fashion and apparel market of 2021, that dual objective — affirmation and aspiration simultaneously — represented a more nuanced communication strategy than the category typically deployed.
Lie to Eye grounded the Free To Be strategy in a clear consumer insight: the Bangladeshi youth audience that Maverick needed to reach was not waiting for permission from institutions or celebrities to define itself. The agency's strategic position, as documented by Clapboard, was that the most credible voice for a brand named Maverick was a real maverick, not a paid one.
The strategic context for this decision was a Bangladesh footwear market under significant structural pressure in 2021. According to apparelresources.com, Bangladesh's domestic footwear market was estimated at approximately US$170 million that year, but only twenty to twenty-five percent of the country's total footwear production was consumed domestically, with the majority destined for export. That domestic market, while growing, was highly competitive and had been affected by pandemic-related reductions in retail foot traffic. Within that environment, building emotional equity with younger consumers rather than competing solely on price or distribution was a defensible long-term play.
Apex Footwear Limited's principal domestic competitors in the lifestyle footwear and fashion segment include Bay Emporium and local distributors of international fast-fashion brands entering Bangladesh's retail corridor. Against those alternatives, Maverick's differentiation could not rest on price alone. The Free To Be campaign made cultural identity the competitive axis, positioning Maverick as the brand for those who actively reject conformity — a meaningfully narrower and more loyal consumer target than the mass market.
The decision to deploy the Mavericks of Bangladesh series as a social content pillar added a documentary texture to what might otherwise have been a conventional fashion film. Profiling three real individuals, the series extended the campaign's credibility beyond the launch audiovisual and gave the brand owned content with longevity, a structural choice that reflects an understanding of how Bangladeshi digital audiences in 2021 consumed lifestyle content on social platforms.
The central creative decision in Free To Be was categorical: every cast and crew member in the launch audiovisual was a real-life maverick, not a model or actor hired to perform authenticity. That constraint shaped every downstream production choice and gave the film its defining texture.
Pulak Das served as Head of Art at Lie to Eye and oversaw the visual direction of the campaign, according to adsoftheworld.com. Mashfique Khalid served as Head of Creative Strategy at Lie to Eye, and Zaria Amreen is credited as copywriter on the campaign, also per adsoftheworld.com. The campaign was positioned not merely as fashion communication but explicitly as a tribute to what the team called the Maverick Mindset — a framing that elevated the brief from product launch to cultural statement.
The launch audiovisual carried the tagline territory expressed in the line that anchored the campaign's digital presence: let your soul be your compass, be uniquely and fearlessly you, because you are FreeToBe, as documented on the Ads of the World archive. That language positioned Maverick's 2021 lifestyle collection as an instrument of self-determination rather than a commodity purchase, which is a structurally different ask of a fashion consumer and requires correspondingly different creative execution to land.
The channel architecture reinforced the creative intent. Billboard placements and giant display screenings gave the campaign physical presence in Bangladesh's urban environments, while the digital layer — lifestyle photoshoots, product videos, and the Mavericks of Bangladesh documentary series — gave it depth and repeatability. The separation of the launch film from the MOB series was a sound editorial decision: the film made the emotional argument at scale, while the series made the human argument in detail. Together they created a campaign that operated across both broadcast and intimate registers without contradicting itself.
No verified campaign-specific performance data for Free To Be is publicly available in the form of sales lift, revenue increase, market-share change, or brand awareness scores. No awards entries or wins for the campaign have been confirmed at Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, based on publicly available records reviewed for this case study.
The campaign asset recorded 3,037 views and 24 likes on the Ads of the World archive platform, according to adsoftheworld.com. Those figures reflect archival engagement from the global advertising industry audience rather than consumer-facing campaign reach, and should be read as a measure of industry visibility rather than commercial performance.
Clapboard assessed Free To Be at 60 out of 100 on its Campaign Score, reflecting a campaign that executes its strategic premise with coherence and craft but stops short of the structural or cultural breakthrough that would place it in the top tier of fashion communication from the region. The score acknowledges the authenticity of the casting approach and the intelligence of the channel architecture, while noting that the campaign's measurable industry footprint — no awards recognition, moderate archival engagement — suggests its impact remained largely within the Bangladesh domestic market rather than generating the kind of international creative industry attention that comparably positioned campaigns have achieved.
Structurally, the campaign's greatest strength is the alignment between its stated philosophy and its production method. Casting real mavericks rather than models is not merely a creative choice but a proof of claim — it makes the brand's assertion about freedom credible at the level of execution. That coherence between strategy and craft is the foundation on which stronger measurable results could be built in subsequent campaign iterations.
Free To Be is a November 2021 fashion and lifestyle campaign created by Lie to Eye for Apex Footwear Limited's Maverick brand in Bangladesh. It aimed to re-establish Maverick as a brand built on individuality and self-expression, using real-life mavericks rather than conventional models in both cast and crew across film, digital, billboard, and activation channels.
Lie to Eye created the Free To Be campaign for Apex Footwear Limited's Maverick brand. The agency team included Mashfique Khalid as Head of Creative Strategy, Pulak Das as Head of Art, and Zaria Amreen as copywriter, according to adsoftheworld.com. The campaign launched in Bangladesh in November 2021 as a multi-channel fashion communication initiative.
Mavericks of Bangladesh, abbreviated MOB, was a social media documentary series produced as part of the Free To Be campaign. It profiled three real individuals whose lives embodied the maverick mindset, extending the campaign's authenticity-first approach beyond the launch film into long-form digital content for Bangladeshi audiences, as documented by Clapboard.
Free To Be received a Clapboard Campaign Score of 60 out of 100. The score reflects coherent strategy and credible creative execution — particularly the casting of real mavericks — while noting limited measurable industry footprint in the form of awards recognition or documented commercial performance data beyond the Bangladesh domestic market.
Lie to Eye positioned Free To Be against a highly competitive Bangladesh domestic footwear market, estimated at approximately US$170 million in 2021 according to apparelresources.com. Rather than competing on price, the campaign made cultural identity the axis of differentiation, targeting younger Bangladeshi consumers who value self-expression over aspirational celebrity association.
No awards for Free To Be have been confirmed at Cannes Lions, Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards based on publicly available records. The campaign asset recorded 3,037 views and 24 likes on the Ads of the World archive platform, according to adsoftheworld.com, indicating moderate industry visibility.
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