MANNY ONE launch

Disruptive performance footwear brand R.A.D® (Rally Against Destruction), has moved into skateboarding footwear through a campaign with longtime creative partners, FLUORO®. The R.A.D® MANNY ONE represents a raw fusion of high-performance skate functionality and 90s retro-futuristic street style. Engineered alongside skateboarding legend Manny Santiago, the shoe is built to handle high impacts and long sessions without sacrificing comfort, boardfeel or style. The challenge for launch was to communicate the shoe’s innovative features in a way that feels authentic to both R.A.D® and Manny Santiago.

The launch campaign presents an expressive, expansive brand world that is more entertainment than advertising. It channels Manny’s relentless optimism and DIY spirit within a retro-futuristic aesthetic that borrows from early gaming and draws on diverse references, from Japanese animation to carnival masks reflecting the skater’s Puerto Rican heritage. Ephemera, texture, tone and motion come together in a highly distinctive realm that plays out across touchpoints.

Brand launch film

The launch film is an absurd take on an epic wipeout. It’s a wild ride that brings the brand feeling to life with a mix of real-life footage, innovative animation and moving image. Set in a London, the film sees Manny Santiago turbo-charged skywards, running through a series of personas. In anime style he endures the ascent only to be eaten by a dragon, then morphs into a plasticine figure which deconstructs to a skull, then just a brain, eyeballs and spinal cord. He falls to earth as a game character, making explosive impact with the ground back in filmed footage mode, embedded in a hole in the ground with comedy wonky limbs. The camera pulls in on his signature tooth gap, which sprouts an exposed nerve that becomes the ‘A’ of the R.A.D® logo, while he laughs in the background.

Texture, tone and energy

The teaser campaign featured pixelated GIFs of the R.A.D® logo and logotype, with go-faster stripes coming across like old Commodore games loading. Embedding tech in a more tangible world brings distinctive texture and tone. Unchained from the narrative conventions of advertising, FLUORO® was freed to home in on texture and materiality, pace and rhythm, unlocking the euphoria of skateboarding.

Playful performance

FLUORO® and R.A.D® have worked together to communicate the MANNY ONE performance credentials within a street skating context, through a digital launch rollout, showcasing tantalising glimpses of the shoe’s design. A graphical rendering of the heel-to-toe drop shows the feel underfoot; the swell foam gets stamped on and bounces back into shape; the TPU heel clip spins in space; the madly durable printed toe cap is envisioned as a beast; and the rubber sole bends in a colourful, textural representation of flexibility.

Blended brand and advertising

Dialling up the colour and exuberance, the R.A.D® MANNY ONE campaign is built, like the shoe, to appeal across ages and genders, with skaters at the core. Creative elements, unchained from marketing conventions, are orchestrated as an entire, distinctive brand world. FLUORO® achieved this through its signature holistic approach that blends the lasting impact of branding with the commercial urgency of advertising, so that both work harder together.