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A Look Back
D
ESIGN
F
IRM
:
Mike Salisbury
Communications, L.L.C.
C
LIENT
:
Levi Strauss & Co.
RIGHT: The original source
of the 501 brand—the
product stock number.
LEVI’S 501 JEANS:
The Biggest Little Number in Clothing
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The Process
How did Levi’s 501 jeans get their name? One might just
as well ask, “Why is the sky blue?” because, like the sky,
Levi’s 501 jeans are something taken for granted. To that
question the average jeans-buying consumer might
respond, “What? Weren’t they always called Levi’s 501
jeans?” The answer is ‘no.’ In fact, Levi’s 501 have become
such an all-American icon, it seems as if that name has
been around for ages, so it is surprising to note that it is
a relatively new development.
THIS PAGE: The little
red tag is perhaps the
most recognizable
clothing tag in history.
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A Look Back
RIGHT: Salisbury’s ad
explaining the 501 concept
“and the inspiration for
me to name the product
because it was impossible
to keep calling the garment
the ‘Shrink-to-Fit Blue
Jeans,’” says Salisbury.
“Just call them 501. The
rest is branding history.
Every maker of denim
product has a numbered
jeans product.”
ABOVE: A quiz on who’s
who from
The Outsiders
—
features the members of the
group all dressed in Levi’s.
The name actually arose from a suggestion Mike Salisbury of
Salisbury Communications L.L.C. made while working on the
branding for a Levi’s jean product for women. As Salisbury tells
the story, for years, women in California had been remaking
Levi’s jeans for men by soaking them in bathtubs filled with
warm water to shrink them to fit their bodies. While this habit
wasn’t well known in the rest of the country, Levi Strauss &
Company realized what they were doing and saw an opportu-
nity. The company developed Levi’s Shrink-to-Fit Button Fly
Jeans For Women. Salisbury was hired to create an advertising
campaign to introduce this new, yet old, product.
“Research said that what was taken for granted in California—
that you had to buy Levi’s oversized and shrink them to fit—
was largely unknown outside the West. My concept to present
this new version of an American classic was to create a new
symbol of communication to simply explain that what fits men
now fits women,” says Salisbury.
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THIS PAGE: Salisbury’s idea
to sell the concept of Levi’s
501 Shrink-to-Fit jeans
for women was to create a
visual metaphor starting
with the image of a famous
male icon in jeans—James
Dean, as shown in the film,
Giant
, and replacing him
with a woman.
Salisbury draws a lot of his inspiration from pop culture,
particularly Hollywood films, so that’s where he turned
for his idea. “I put a female in a well-known male situa-
tion: a situation in which jeans were an organic part of
that situation,” he explains. “The ultimate symbol to me
was James Dean putting his feet up on the back of that
car seat, leaning back in the rear seat, slumped down
with his hat pulled over his eyes in the film
Giant
. My
James Dean was a lady.” Salisbury combined these two
“easily understood and known symbols” and by doing
so, created a visual metaphor for Levi’s new product.
The visual metaphor said what no words would explain
in billboard advertising and venues where long explan-
atory copy was prohibitive. However, clients like to talk
about their product, so long copy print ads with well-
defined illustrations outlining the whole shrink system
were created to explain how these Levi’s fit women—
especially their behinds.
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BELOW: This bus poster
for a Levi’s product is
graffiti proof.
“Originally the tagline to accompany the ad was ‘Levi’s Shrink-
to-Fit-Button-Fly Jeans-Now-Cut-For-Women.’ That’s kind of a
lot of words for the teeny little space left over on a billboard,
print ad, or TV screen,” says Salisbury. “Who needs words?
The client needs words…that’s who. It’s their product. But we
needed a catch— no one would remember to say all of that
when they went into ask for some jeans. We needed a brand.
“Just call the damn things what we call all of them—501s and
trademark it!” Salisbury remembers telling the client, referring
to Levi’s internal stocking number. “That’s how Levi’s 501 came
to be the most well-known brand of clothing in history. It was
a combination of everything—simplifying a wordy tagline
to a number and reinforcing it with a cohesive, strategic ad
campaign. Thus the most famous clothing brand in the world
was given to the public to use 100 years after its invention:
Levi’s 501 jeans—the biggest little number in clothing.”
LEFT: Salisbury’s concept for
a modern-look baggy jean
refers to the Levi’s brand
equity and identifiers as the
basis for the product name.
ABOVE: This magazine
was given away free at
retail to resell the Levi’s
core brand values to the
jeans-buying public.
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