Calvin Klein caused a spike in Bieber Fever.
Since the brand unveiled Justin Bieber as the face and body of its spring underwear campaign two weeks ago, its social channels have added a combined 3.6 million followers.
It probably didn’t hurt that Lara Stone seductively posed alongside Bieber in several of the images shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott — but Bieber was clearly the main attraction.
In the first 48 hours after the launch, the hashtag #mycalvins generated 1.6 million Twitter mentions. That’s five times the number of mentions that Kim Kardashian’s naked Paper Magazine’s cover shoot drew with the #breaktheinternet hashtag.
With its carefully choreographed rollout, its nod to the memorable Marky Mark and Kate Moss shots of the Nineties and multiple teasers, the campaign managed to briefly insert itself into the zeitgeist.
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Saturday Night Live parodied the unlikely pairing of Bieber and Stone. Ellen DeGeneres and Miley Cyrus each “re-grammed” an image from the campaign with their heads superimposed on Stone’s body — getting a quirky take on Calvin Klein’s message out to their combined following of 23.1 million.
None of this exposure came by accident.
The brand carefully teased the partnership with a video on its social media platforms before the news was officially released by Bieber via Instagram on Jan. 6. That initial post, with a caption that reads “Officially part of the legacy,” has garnered almost 1.6 million likes to date.
Throughout the day of the release and the following day, the hashtags #mycalvins #JustinWereReady #newfaceofcalvinklein and terms “Calvin Klein,” “Lara Stone” and “Justin’s Calvin Klein” trended worldwide on Twitter. Since Jan. 6, the hashtag #mycalvins has seen 1.85 million Twitter mentions
As of Friday, the campaign’s various posts elicited 4.4 million interactions on Twitter, averaging 74,200 interactions per post, according to the brand.
On the afternoon of Jan. 9, the campaign became the top Facebook trend — no small feat, considering the social network has 865 million active daily users.
In total, more than 172 million social media followers received campaign-related posts published by Calvin Klein, Bieber, Stone, Alas and Piggott’s social channels — fueling 25.5 million fan interactions. The spring Calvin Klein Underwear campaign video, which was tracked by True Reach, has received more than 20 million views so far on YouTube, calvinklein.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Weibo and Fahlo.