Let’s say you want to market your brand to millennials and Gen Z, but you don’t have the key ingredient for this audience: a powerful digital presence. How do you grow your brand in a time when competition for digital mind space is fiercer than ever?

This was the task we faced last year when we transformed Breakmood, a new apparel brand, into an up-and-coming player in the digital market. First, we gave them a facelift and identity positioning that would resonate with values and habits that appeal intimately to millenials and Gen Z audiences. We then built a new e-commerce site based on this new identity and prepared it for business. But organic traffic was slow at first because the brand was too new, and the content on the site was limited. While we have had great success with paid advertising campaigns, these are difficult to fund for a small brand. Our solution was to build on these first steps by developing a holistic social media strategy: we created a photo and video shoot, we collaborated with influencers, we engaged the community, one customer and follower at a time. In other words, we did not just rebrand Breakmood from the ground up—we also made Breakmood the center of a new community organized around its mission and product.