Teak Goes Urban Exploring For JanSport

JanSport’s new “Driven to Go” campaign is targeting a slightly older, more diverse, city audience, with a creative focus on urban exploration. A fun aspect of the production included sourcing all real people (no actors) mostly from social media, and a few key people were even handpicked off of the streets of San Francisco.

Conceived by a creative ensemble at branding and content studio Teak, the campaign included this spot titled “Hammock,” which underscores that you can go pretty much anywhere with JanSport’s versatile Hatchet backpack. A young gent hikes up to a pedestrian bridge, pulls a hammock out of his Hatchet backpack, and relaxes across the steel expanse.

Teak director/creative director Greg Rowan said of the casting for the “Hammock” spot, “We were location scouting in San Francisco, on the hunt for a very steep hill--perfect for a skateboarder to bomb. Just then a tall, lanky skater whipped past our van, pulled a power slide, and hopped off of his board, disappearing into a well known skate shop. I asked the driver of our car to pull over and headed into the shop, where I was immediately introduced to Zach Stewart, a well known San Francisco street skater. He was a friendly guy, up for anything that sounded like an adventure. The irony is that we ended up using him for his character and not his amazing skating ability.”