Bear Grylls + Dockers® Khakis
Dockers® Signs Bear Grylls for 2012 Campaign
Women’s Wear Daily December 2011
DOCKERS GOES WILD: Khaki pants might bring to mind cubicle drones, but Dockers is out to change that image with its upcoming spring marketing push. The Levi Strauss & Co.-owned unit has signed Bear Grylls, star of Discovery Channel’s “Man vs. Wild,” as the face of the 2012 campaign.
“My schedule means I want khakis that I don’t worry about,” said Grylls, who on his show navigates the world’s most inhospitable terrain, displaying extreme survival skills like trapping wild boar, scaling rock pinnacles and fashioning a wet suit from a seal carcass. “Dockers makes great trousers that are comfortable, easy to wear and look great, too.”
The campaign will break in print, online, outdoor, in-store and on radio in February and March. The media buy has not been finalized, according to Dockers. In the first six months of this year, Dockers spent $3.6 million on advertising, according to Kantar Media figures.
Lensed by photographer Koto Bolofo, portions of the campaign were shot in New York, including outdoor images of Grylls in Central Park. The ads will bear the ongoing tag line “Wear the Pants,” which Dockers introduced in 2009.
Grylls is signed to a year-long contract with Dockers. The television star is a former member of the British special forces and has successfully scaled Mount Everest, led expeditions in Antarctica and written 10 books, including the bestseller “Mud, Sweat and Tears.”
Dockers® Signed Bear Grylls to Front Their New Campaign
New York Magazine December 2011
Man vs. Wild star and explorer Bear Grylls signed a one-year deal as the face of Dockers' new campaigns. His first set of ads — many of which were shot in the wilderness of Central Park — will debut in February as part of a sustained media and marketing push. Says Grylls, "My schedule means I want khakis that I don't worry about." Apparently, Dockers are those khakis. It certainly would be irritating to have to stop and consider your pants while you're scaling a glacier or preparing to fight off a pack of wild boars.
Bear Grylls signs on with Dockers®
San Francisco Business Times December 2011
Here's something wild: Bear Grylls, star of Discovery Channel’s "Man vs. Wild," has signed on to star in Dockers’ 2012 advertising campaign.
According to a report in Women’s Wear Daily, the year-long campaign will start in February, and will be in print, online, outdoor, in-store and on the radio. It is the latest iteration of Dockers' ongoing "Wear the Pants" campaign.
“Bear Grylls is a real-life hero, the perfect embodiment of our 'Wear the Pants' positioning," said Jen Sey, senior vice president of global marketing for Dockers. "We are thrilled to be teaming with him, a true man of action and ingenuity, outbraving and conquering the world, doing what he loves. His passion and drive as well as his commitment to his family, are just some of the qualities that embody his 'wear the pants' spirit and therefore, the Dockers brand."
Many of the scenes were shot in the wilds of New York's Central Park and elsewhere in the city by Koto Bolofo.
Dockers is owned by Levi Strauss & Co.
The survival expert, once a member of British special forces, is no stranger to lending his name or face to commercial enterprises. In addition to his television show, Grylls has his own branded web store, where Dockers-clad desk jockeys can buy Bear's survival gear. He also has a line of knives and basic survival kits available at sports stores.
"My schedule means I want khakis that I don't worry about," Grylls is reported as saying.
Dockers® Signs Star Of 'Man vs. Wild' TV Show For 2012 Campaign
Complex.com December 2011
Dockers is going wild. The classic American heritage brand has signed Bear Grylls, star of Discovery Channel's "Man vs. Wild," as the face of their 2012 campaign. Lensed by photographer Koto Bolofo, portions of the campaign were shot in New York, including outdoor images of Grylls in Central Park. As always, the ads will bear the ongoing tag line "Wear the Pants," which Dockers introduced in 2009. Grylls, who is signed to a year-long contract, has successfully scaled Mount Everest and led expeditions in Antarctica, so we're expecting to see the brand's classic American pants mixed with a rugged look. Check out the campaign in print, online, outdoor, in-store and on radio starting February.
He’s Wild About Khakis
The New York Times February 2012
On a recent morning, Bear Grylls, the star of the Discovery Channel survivor show “Man vs. Wild,” was dressed in a rugged ensemble of army-green work shirt and cargo pants, a no-nonsense knife strapped to one leg. Standing in the middle of a pine forest with his jaw purposefully clenched, he looked ready for battle.
Alas, there were no snakes or grizzly bears to wrangle into submission. Mr. Grylls, 37, was not in the Rockies fending for his life, but less than an hour from Los Angeles, filming a commercial for Degree deodorant.
Not that it was any easier than filming his TV show, which drops Mr. Grylls in the most God-forsaken pockets of the planet and watches him face off against blinding ice storms and insect-drenched jungles. “It’s quite difficult,” he said, walking away from the cameras after what felt like the 80th take, a pair of young makeup artists in skinny jeans trailing behind him.
Lately, this kind of “labor” has been taking up more of Mr. Grylls’s time, as he finds himself transitioning from a wacky British television character known for drinking his own urine and sleeping inside a dead camel (for hydration and warmth, respectively), into a more mainstream celebrity.
Dockers recently selected Mr. Grylls as the face of its campaign, which features the boyishly handsome adventure fanatic tramping through Central Park in slimly tailored khakis and a narrow tie, looking more like a young Gregory Peck than Crocodile Dundee. The images have already caused a stir: Out magazine’s Web site published a Bear Grylls “Swoon Alert” wondering why Dockers was forcing the “dreamy nature explorer” to wear shirts in the photos.
In May, Mr. Grylls’s memoir, “Mud, Sweat and Tears,” and live show will arrive in the United States. (The book, his 11th — he’s also written on survival techniques and for children — is already a best seller in Britain and Australia). His growing empire also includes a “Man vs. Wild” video game, an outdoor clothing line sold at REI and Walmart, and an iPhone app.
But if Mr. Grylls is going corporate and high tech, it is with some reluctance. Though “Man vs. Wild” has been on the air since 2006, he insists he hired a publicist last year “so I don’t have to do P.R.,” and that he’s “still always the scruffiest person at any meeting.”
Sitting in an office building in Santa Monica, Calif., one rainy afternoon, having just stepped out of a conference with members of his Bear Grylls Ventures team, he was still dressed in his running clothes from earlier in the day.
Mr. Grylls was perched on a leather chair, his bright-blue Vivobarefoot sneakers propped up on a table, as he took swigs from a Diet Coke. He was much more keen to discuss recent adventures than anything having to do with his brand. For instance: the 5,000-mile trip he took with friends last summer on an inflatable boat through the Arctic Ocean’s Northwest Passage, a treacherous journey.
“We had a huge adventure, we had monster storms,” he said, his baby-blue eyes growing wide. “We needed bear spray to keep the bears away, because there were lots of bears up there when you’re camping at night.”
Then there was the time he and Jake Gyllenhaal, a friend since the actor appeared on “Man vs. Wild” last season, decided to go for a leisurely boat ride in the Santa Monica Bay. “We pull out of Marina del Rey and, I’m not joking, it’s like standing waves, 30 feet high. Absolute monsters,” Mr. Grylls said. “We just got smashed to bits.”
“Hanging with Bear is not for the faint of heart,” Mr. Gyllenhaal wrote in an e-mail. “He is always pushing the limit, and it is infectious to be around.”
Or to hear about: It is Mr. Grylls’s knack for exuberant, slightly over-the-top storytelling, enhanced by a buttery accent, that might resonate with the 1.1 million viewers who tune into “Man vs. Wild” each week. (The show is particularly popular with men in their mid-30s.)
Unlike more conventional Robinson Crusoe types, like Les Stroud, the star of “Survivorman,” also on the Discovery Channel, Mr. Grylls performs before the camera, joking, charming and narrating his exploits with a melodramatic goofiness. Biting into an enormous maggot (a protein-rich survival food, evidently), he dangles the writhing specimen in front of his mouth and grimaces in horror before slowly crunching down. After the insect explodes in his mouth, he makes a stomach-turning and somewhat outrageous joke about how it tasted.
This showmanship is a reaction against the “boring survival shows” that Mr. Grylls, born Edward Michael Grylls, watched as a child. The advice back then, he said, was “don’t move, don’t take any risks, put yourself up for rescue, collect water, and be super-cautious in everything you do and everything you eat.”
In contrast, he said, he wanted to make his show “really dynamic and fun, so I started doing much more of that sort of chomping into stuff and being on the move and keeping the pace going.”
In the second season of “Man vs. Wild,” Mr. Grylls came under fire for enhancing reality a bit too much, when a consultant to the show leaked to the press that Mr. Grylls had spent the night at a hotel instead of roughing it in the wilderness, as viewers were led to believe.
“I’m the first to say when I’ve messed things up,” said Mr. Grylls, who publicly apologized for the incident, saying that he stayed in the hotel to be with his family. The Discovery Channel reacted by adding a disclaimer to the show stating that Mr. Grylls and the crew occasionally receive outside support; they also added a behind-the-scenes episode to every season, for transparency’s sake.
To companies like Dockers, however, peccadilloes like this pale in comparison to Mr. Grylls’s real-life narrative, which reads like a Boy Wonder adventure book. Mr. Grylls, a former member of the British army’s elite Special Air Service, scaled Mount Everest at age 23, and is a churchgoing family man. (“Off to church now,” he recently posted on Twitter. “Then with U.S. Navy pilots to fly tucanos!”)
He also fits in mentoring Boy Scouts, one perk of which is getting to hang out with Kate Middleton, who volunteers with the organization. Last year, he escorted a Scout troop to the royal wedding, though “we were just kind of there in a very background way,” he said.
Back at home there is a pretty blond wife, Shara, and three young sons — Jesse, Marmaduke and Huckleberry — who live on a private, electricity-free island in Wales. The family also spends time on a barge on the Thames and at a beach house in Malibu, Calif. “He’s a dedicated father; he talks a lot about that on the show,” said Jen Sey, senior vice president for global marketing for Dockers.
According to Jason Fine, the editor of Men’s Journal, which has featured Mr. Grylls on its cover, the star’s appeal also stems from the fact that he is less of an alpha male than, say, the burly spit-shooters on other adversity reality shows like “Ice Road Truckers” and “Deadliest Catch.”
“He doesn’t have that sort of dour, he-man thing to him,” Mr. Fine said. “He admits fear when he’s fearful. There was one episode where he was like, ‘Wow, it’s time for a courage pill.’ The guy is pretty upfront about that stuff, and it’s just more real. I think people relate to that, and not just dudes.”
Not just Americans, either. “All around the world, people come up to me and go, ‘You’re the dude who slept in that camel.’ Or, ‘You’re the dude who drank your own urine,’ ” Mr. Grylls said. “And I keep thinking, at the end of my life, do I want to be known as the person who slept in a camel and drank my own urine?”
He shrugged and added, “Though maybe there are worse things to be known for.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 4, 2012
An article last Sunday about Bear Grylls, the star of the television survivor show “Man vs. Wild,” misstated the first name of his wife. She is Shara Grylls, not Shana.