Why Journeys Made the First Day of School Surreal: Borrowing Absurdity Without Copying Memes

Last year Journeys launched its "Life on Loud" brand platform by reimagining New Radicals' 1998 hit "You Get What You Give" in a throwback music video.

For this year's back-to-school campaign, the Genesco shoe retailer pushed the music video logic even louder with "Don't Just Show Up. Turn Up."

Thirty seconds of surreal first day

A 30-second hero video captures the first day of school at its most musically surreal:

• Students arrive by bus, speaker-loaded bike or horseback
• Individuals are followed by personal DJs
• They play five-necked guitars
• They surf on keyboards
• The lunchline serves up sneakers
• One student's head is given a claymation makeover

The effort was developed with Stagwell shop Anomaly, which also crafted last year's brand platform. The video was directed by artist Max Siedentopf, with hand-rendered effects by animation partner Slow Bureau.

Running across TV and social, it also includes three 15-second cutdowns, multiple six-second spots crafted for short-form social platforms, and a social-first influencer program.

Two sources of inspiration

Apart from a desire to go bigger and louder than last year, the campaign was inspired by two things:

1. A fine art photograph mixing medical and musical tropes
2. A blog post in defense of brain rot — positing that the digital material favoured by Gen Z and Gen Alpha is how young people are responding to an increasingly absurd reality

"We're obviously making a back-to-school film, let's make a back-to-school film that embraces that absurdity in terms of imagination — not speaking Gen Z language or explaining memes or ripping off memes — but really trying to be inspired by that as a creative pillar for the work." — Leanne Amann, group creative director, Anomaly

Drawing on '90s music videos directed by Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham let the agency speak about the brand's DNA and to young consumers without relying on other back-to-school marketing tropes.

"When people show up as themselves, they're not bending to the world — the world's bending to them and their creativity. That became a really inspiring blank canvas for us to get into our own kid-like imagination."

"When you're going back to school, it can feel like the end of freedom, and we wanted it to feel like the start of it… not in a cheesy way, but in a way that feels slightly rebellious."

No weirdness for weirdness's sake

While Anomaly had a lot of white space, the team avoided concepts that were weird for weird's sake and didn't want the craft to be chaotic, no matter how out-there the ideas.

That led to a partnership with Siedentopf, who has a background in installation art and knowledge of practical world-building. Most effects in the final product were made in camera, apart from hand-rendered effects reminiscent of '90s MTV claymation.

"We held ourselves to this idea of just following the fun."

What marketers should take from this

Don't imitate the meme — take inspiration from the conditions that produced it. The creative principle is stated explicitly: "not speaking Gen Z language or explaining memes or ripping off memes." It sidesteps the most common failure mode of generation-targeted creative.

Build on the brand platform. Having "Life on Loud" from last year meant this year only needed a direction: louder. That is a fundamentally different cost structure from inventing a concept annually.

Hold absurdity to a craft standard. Excluding weirdness for its own sake and shooting most effects in camera is what gives the output its quality. Freedom of idea and discipline of execution are separate questions.

Design the format set from the start. A 30-second hero, three 15-second cutdowns, multiple six-second spots, an influencer program — short-form was produced as its own thing rather than sliced from the hero.

Invert the emotional premise of the season. Framing it as "the start of freedom, not the end" is where it leaves category convention. For the same season from other angles see From Yamal to the Mall: Inside American Eagle's Back-to-School Marketing and Ugg Puts an Indie Pop Band at the Centre of Back-to-School.

Treat director casting as part of the concept. Choosing Siedentopf, from installation art, was not a style preference but a production decision to build things for real. The references — Michel Gondry and Chris Cunningham — are likewise directors who built surrealism with physical apparatus rather than CG. Reference and method rest on the same logic.

Use "follow the fun" as a decision rule. The standard the team held itself to sounds vague, but it functioned as a practical filter for what survives when ideas are abundant. Work built on absurdity becomes scattered without one.

Note the effect of retaining the same agency two years running. Anomaly made both last year's platform and this year's campaign. Starting without having to re-explain the brand's DNA is why a brief as short as "louder" worked.