With the help of the “anti-advertising” agency, Vivobarefoot has launched a joyful animated call to arms that blends play, provocation and purpose.
We in the creative industries love a good first. First exhibition. First pitch win. First time someone says “we’ll triple the budget”. Well, Vivobarefoot, the certified B Corp challenging the shoe industry, has just launched its first brand campaign. And like their shoes, it refuses to tiptoe politely into the room.
Free Your Feet is the name—and the provocation—behind a brilliant animated film created by “anti-advertising” agency Thingy & Thingy. The spot is playful on the surface, but more profoundly, it asks us to reconsider decades of design that have boxed our feet (and, by implication, ourselves) into padded, numbing conformity.
When I first watched it on Instagram, I did that instinctive thing of wriggling my toes. A small thing, perhaps, but also a reminder of how little I usually think about them.
Analogue joy, digital bite
The campaign itself is a mash-up: vibrant hand-drawn energy colliding with sharp digital storytelling. It’s designed to be scroll-stopping but also soul-nudging; not just another lifestyle ad in beige tones.
Galahad Clark, founder of Vivobarefoot, is clear about the intention: “When you free your feet, you free your whole self,” he says. “We’re not meant to live inside boxes – not for our bodies, not for our minds, and not for our feet.”
It’s a bold positioning for a brand that has, until now, been laser-focused on running. In shifting the story from “shoe for running geeks” to “invitation to everyone with feet”, Vivobarefoot is opening the door (or perhaps unlacing the shoe) to urban dwellers, women, and anyone looking for something more human underfoot.
Challenging the industry
There’s a deeper layer here too: a shot across the bow of the global footwear industry, which churns out 20 billion pairs of shoes each year, most of which are destined for landfills. Vivobarefoot isn’t pretending that one film can solve that, but it’s planting a flag.
Adam Wagner, Vivobarefoot’s brand & marketing lead, describes working with Thingy & Thingy as “an unlock for the brand”; the kind of agency partnership that sparks new thinking. The process didn’t just deliver a film; it also inspired a website redesign and fresh ideas for customer experience.
As someone who writes extensively about this kind of work, I find that detail telling. Often, the best campaigns aren’t just those that shift perceptions externally, but also those that recalibrate the company internally.
Anti-advertising agency doing the advertising
The choice of Thingy & Thingy is, in itself, a statement. Its founders, Darren Simpson (former ECD at Acne London and creative director at Wieden+Kennedy) and Thais Delcanton (also a seasoned advertising creative director), proudly describe themselves as “anti-advertising.” No brass plaques, no ego, no industry jargon. Their south-east London HQ has “two chairs, some pens and a sofa.”
More broadly, for creatives watching this campaign, the lesson is less about footwear and more about bravery. Stepping into brand advertising for the first time, Vivobarefoot could easily have played it safe: glossy lifestyle shots, sunlit yoga mats, you know the drill. Instead, they’ve chosen colour, animation, and a cheeky “joyful f-you” to convention.
And maybe that’s the real takeaway here. When you want to reset how people see you, don’t just tweak the logo or change the tagline. Free the feet, yes… but also free the imagination.
