How Levi's Used Fashion to Urge Americans to Vote in 2018
Levi's 'Use Your Vote' is a 2018 United States film campaign created by FCB West that urged eligible Americans to register and vote ahead of the November 6 midterm elections, grounding a civic message inside the brand's longstanding identity as a cultural symbol of American life.
The campaign launched publicly on September 24, 2018 — one day before National Voter Registration Day — as confirmed by Levi Strauss and Co. and reported by The Drum. That precise timing was deliberate. By anchoring the release to a nationally recognised civic date, Levi's maximised the moment when voter registration conversations were already reaching peak public attention across the United States. The campaign formed part of Levi's broader 'VOTE' initiative, with the tagline 'Your vote is the ultimate use of your voice,' as documented by Levi Strauss and Co. and noted by The Creatives Room.
Mechanically, the campaign centred on a national television film supported by digital and social media distribution, giving it reach across the full media landscape in the United States. It carried a single, unambiguous objective: convert cultural authority into civic participation by speaking directly to American consumers in the language of identity, heritage, and collective responsibility. For a fashion and apparel brand already embedded in American iconography, the campaign represented a logical — if bold — extension of brand purpose into public interest territory. Clapboard rates the campaign 69 out of 100, reflecting its strong strategic clarity and cultural relevance balanced against the absence of publicly verified performance outcomes.
Levi's positioned 'Use Your Vote' at the intersection of brand purpose and public interest, a space that was becoming increasingly contested among major apparel players in the United States by 2018.
The strategic rationale drew on a simple consumer insight: Americans who wear Levi's are not merely buying denim — they are participating in a cultural narrative that stretches from the Gold Rush to the counterculture to the present day. That narrative carries implicit civic weight, and the 2018 campaign made that weight explicit. By aligning with voter registration rather than any partisan position, Levi's preserved broad consumer appeal while still taking a visible stand — a distinction that separated the campaign from more polarising brand activism undertaken by competitors such as Nike, whose 'Just Do It' thirtieth anniversary campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick launched the same month and generated intense national debate, as reported by The New York Times. Where Nike chose confrontation, Levi's chose inclusion.
The apparel market context reinforced the strategic logic. According to Euromonitor International data cited by Fashion United, no individual company represented more than three percent of global apparel and footwear retail sales in 2018, with the five largest companies — Nike, Adidas Group, Inditex, H&M, and Fast Retailing — collectively accounting for only around eight percent of the global market. In such a fragmented competitive landscape across the United States and beyond, differentiation through cultural positioning rather than price or product alone becomes structurally important. Levi's, as a heritage brand without the scale of Nike or the vertical integration of Inditex's Zara, had particular reason to invest in campaigns that deepened emotional and civic allegiance among American consumers. 'Use Your Vote' was not an outlier in that context — it was a coherent expression of brand strategy.
Benito Montorio directed the 'Use Your Vote' film for Levi's through Pulse Films, bringing a visual sensibility shaped by documentary realism and choreographed movement to a campaign that needed to feel both urgent and authentically American.
The film's most distinctive creative decision was its soundtrack. Aretha Franklin's 'Think' — a song recorded in 1968 and saturated with the energy of civil rights-era America — provided the campaign with an immediate emotional and historical register, as reported by The Drum and noted by shots.net. Released in the same year that Franklin passed away, the choice carried additional resonance in 2018, connecting the act of voting to a broader lineage of American civic struggle and cultural expression. The song did not merely accompany the images; it located the campaign inside a specific tradition of democratic urgency.
Visual effects and colour grading were executed by Electric Theatre Collective, whose work on the film is documented by their own reporting. The colour treatment played a critical role in giving the film a quality that sat between the warmth of archival Americana and the immediacy of contemporary street life — an aesthetic balance that served the campaign's intent to speak to a wide cross-section of Americans across the United States without flattening the film into generic patriotism.
Karin Onsager-Birch, Chief Creative Officer at FCB West, described the campaign's creative intent directly, as quoted by The Drum: 'It's enormously rewarding to work with a partner like Levi's who believes in making a stand for important social issues. This campaign to remind us all of the power we hold with our vote is an urgent plea to not take that right lightly. We hope it inspires others to action as much as it has inspired us.' That statement frames the creative ambition clearly — the film was designed to generate feeling before it generated information.
No verified performance data for the 'Use Your Vote' campaign is publicly available. Levi's and FCB West have not released figures for view counts, voter registration referrals, or measured brand impact attributable to the campaign in the United States. That absence is not unusual for a public interest film of this type, where civic outcomes are notoriously difficult to attribute to individual communications.
Structural analysis, however, supports a credible case for effectiveness. The campaign launched on September 24, 2018 — one day before National Voter Registration Day — giving it a natural amplification window when press, social platforms, and civic organisations were already primed to circulate voter-related content. National television distribution combined with digital and social support maximised reach across the United States at the precise moment it was most actionable. The use of Aretha Franklin's 'Think' gave broadcast media and entertainment press a culturally newsworthy hook that extended earned reach well beyond paid placements.
The campaign's structural effectiveness also rested on its restraint. By avoiding partisan framing and instead anchoring the message in universal civic participation, 'Use Your Vote' reduced the risk of consumer backlash that more politically explicit campaigns invite in a divided national environment. For a heritage apparel brand operating across the full breadth of the United States market, that restraint was both a creative and a commercial discipline. The Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100 reflects exactly this reading: strong strategic architecture and genuine creative craft, with the ceiling on the score set by the lack of measurable public outcomes and the inherent difficulty of standing out in a crowded moment of brand civic activism.
Levi's 'Use Your Vote' was a 2018 civic engagement campaign urging Americans to register and vote ahead of the November midterm elections. Created by FCB West and launched on September 24, 2018, the film used Aretha Franklin's 'Think' to connect Levi's brand identity with democratic participation across the United States.
Benito Montorio of Pulse Films directed the 'Use Your Vote' film for Levi's. Visual effects and colour grading were handled by Electric Theatre Collective. The campaign was created by FCB West, with Karin Onsager-Birch serving as Chief Creative Officer, as reported by The Drum and shots.net.
Levi's launched 'Use Your Vote' on September 24, 2018, one day before National Voter Registration Day, as confirmed by Levi Strauss and Co. The timing maximised relevance ahead of the November 6 United States midterm elections, giving the campaign its strongest possible window for earned media amplification and audience action.
FCB West created 'Use Your Vote' for Levi's in 2018. The campaign was part of Levi's broader 'VOTE' initiative in the United States. FCB West's Chief Creative Officer Karin Onsager-Birch led the creative, describing the work as an urgent plea for Americans not to take their right to vote lightly.
Levi's 'Use Your Vote' receives a Clapboard Score of 69 out of 100. The score reflects strong strategic clarity, precise launch timing, and genuine creative craft — including the use of Aretha Franklin's 'Think' — balanced against the absence of publicly verified performance metrics for this United States public interest campaign.
Levi's 'Use Your Vote' avoided partisan framing, focusing on universal voter participation rather than specific political positions. This distinguished it from Nike's concurrent Kaepernick campaign, which courted deliberate controversy, as reported by The New York Times. Levi's chose inclusion over confrontation, targeting the broadest possible American audience across the United States.
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