A look at GAP’s viral denim campaign with KATSEYE; how company is welcoming 2,000 employees back to San Francisco HQ

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — You could feel the energy bursting out of GAP‘s headquarters in San Francisco; even the city’s mayor showed up.

“I just spoke to the GAP employees who are back in the office five days a week starting today,” said San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie. “GAP – thank you for leading the charge on the back to work San Francisco. Let’s go.”

The white box from the company’s latest viral campaign front and center welcoming nearly 2,000 employees back to the office.

“It is a hydraulic system that really brings the space to life and makes the wall move, and all you do is click and hold it a little longer as fast or slow as you want to go – and the idea is to really make it move to the beat to the song and bring some energy to a certain part of the campaign,” said Calvin Leung, VP of Creative GAP.

MORE: SF has more workers returning to the office than LA but still lags behind other cities, data shows

The box is called the “breathing room,” a design by a LA set designer Wesley Goodrich.

“She was really inspired knowing that this was a denim campaign around the Juxtaposition of jeans and tees which is very much gap. So this fabric is actually inspired to move just like the way a shirt like when you are dancing with jeans,” said Leung.

Leung showed us inside the intricate box that served as the stage for their “Better in Denim” campaign with the global girl group KATSEYE breaking records with 20 million views in the first three days.

Luz Pena: “What is really cool is that you said let’s not keep this box set aside. You wanted to bring it to the headquarters. Why?
Calvin Leung: “It’s a piece of art and when we saw this thing, we were like – wow the level of thought and engineering, it’s a piece of modern art, and its something that people all want to take a picture with, play with and when we think about the energy we are trying to bring to the office, this is like the perfect thing to kind of celebrate the campaign but also just bring a piece of what we do to the space that people can interact with.”

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The song in the campaign video is “Milkshake” by Kelis so it was only fitting that workers had milkshakes to go back to the office on Monday.

“We want everyone to feel like they are part of the campaign which really was the goal a true opportunity to unite people, and we are seeing that happen,” said Leung.

Rodney Fong, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, is glad companies like GAP are encouraging their workers to go back into the office, describing it as an inflection point that will better the overall economy in downtown.

“We are seeing the downtown foot traffic up by 21% here in San Francisco,” said Fong. “We are starting to see tourism numbers come back and convention numbers come back, and all things are pointing in the right direction.”

Other companies in San Francisco have welcomed employees back with music and events. On August 18, San Francisco welcomed 8,000 city employees back to the office for a four-day in person workweek with activities and food trucks outside of City Hall.