Tommy Bahama
Digital design and production for resort-wear e-commerce.
Creative Role: Digital Designer, Digital Production Designer
Known for their signature Hawaiian Camp Shirt, for over 25 years Tommy Bahama has been helping customers live the Island Life in casual resort, swim, and golf apparel. Tommy Bahama is an enterprise-scale brand with it’s own restaurant and furniture lines, although it is best known for it’s light-spirited leisure-wear.
I was brought onto the design team in 2017 as the brand pivoted to embrace it’s digital presence and growing e-commerce revenue. Cross-department collaboration brought animation, video, and comprehensive print-to-digital campaigns to what had historically been a print-focused organization.
Flipside Campaign
Flipside is an annual spend-to-earn promotion, and one of the most comprehensive annual engagement campaigns at Tommy Bahama. I played a lead role in production and design visuals from the start to finish. In the year featured here, the company introduced an extra conversion incentive through 2 phases (Gold and Silver) with coordinated earning & reward periods. Myself and a copywriter partnered with team leads across departments to build and design and execute this 6 phase suite.
Below: Styles of Promo phases for “Gold” promotion period, Homepage
Below: Earnings & Redemption Email highlights, followed by collateral for email banner & email grid assets.
Digital production design is strategic design
When you are a designer doing production work, you have an eye on all digital parts running through a digital studio. This wide view of company creative can allow you to anticipate opportunity. One example is this campaign that came to life at the holiday season from at Tommy Bahama.
During the holiday season I was able to proactively propose and create novel assets—designing eye-catching creative around season-critical timelines. In this example, an animated 2-day Free Shipping promo right before the holiday shipping deadline.
Production design is often perceived as mechanical or junior work. However, it is a missed opportunity to treat this work as non-creative. Some of a brand’s most innovative opportunities can be spotted by designers with their eyes on all the work—designers found in production roles.
Conclusion
I came to Tommy Bahama Corporate with only prior experience in small business and start-up environments, and the opportunity to flex into a much larger and historically retail company was a wonderful challenge in my career. Tommy Bahama continues to harbor opportunities for digital innovation: as a lifestyle brand for an older resort and golf audience, there are many ways they can become leader in both accessibility and luxury for their loyal customers.