Canali Anthology, a digital storytelling platform to celebrate the past and the future of the brand
Brand experiences
Luxury
Canali
2020
Challenge
Creating a digital initiative to celebrate the 85th anniversary of Canali’s birth. A narrative capable of strengthening the group and letting the Canali family and the company’s values come to the surface, with the help of proprietary archive material.
Solution
Anthology is a website that combines a standout visual identity with a strong editorial sensibility. A digital archive (in Italian, English, and Chinese), based on a series of clips and video interviews, dedicated to the production sites and techniques of Canali, a longstanding fashion brand associated with quality and attention to detail.
Impact
Canali Anthology is a digital storytelling platform that combines a strong visual component with a distinct editorial dimension, a multimedia archive consists of videos, articles, and archival materials. From sharing the stories the stories of the people working in the company to narrating the history of key products and places in the Canali world, as well as providing a personalized dictionary.
To celebrate the past, present, and — most importantly — future of a familiar brand that conjugates sartorial tradition with industrial production, we designed a storytelling platform where we gathered the very personal stories of the people that make (and have made) the company what it is. An anthology of records that, together, make up a powerful tool for external communication and brand positioning. Anthology, however, is directed at the people inside the company too.
Anthology is born from the desire to recreate the feeling of flicking through an album of memories. The stories are told in several formats and styles: over 70 videos (short documentaries filmed across Italy, China, and the US), in-depth articles, and other media retrieved from the archive material, like photographs, are the capstone elements of the platform. The website is divided into seven distinct sections:
- Family, two generations of the Canali family narrating their story;
- Vision, the brand’s values and mission;
- Crafts, stories about the product and its sartorial style;
- People, the thoughts and skills of colleagues;
- Places, the production centers and the key cities associated with Canali;
- Heritage, images, key moments, and milestones that have marked the company’s history;
- Canalipedia, glossary of keywords that help navigate the overarching story of Canali.
A team of videomakers, storytellers, designers, and developers from MAIZE have worked together with Canali’s marketing team to create the website. They have defined how to conduct the interviews, the architectural structure of the site’s content, and the visual components. Six months were necessary to complete work on the platform. Once the project’s baseline was agreed upon with the client, the first set of interviews with some of Canali’s most influential figures was immediately planned. A set of recurring questions was created to define a linear narrative and thus chart the way forward.
The site’s architecture also began to get drafted, with placeholder tabs and text boxes to give it shape. As the interviews went on, the short documentaries dedicated to Canali’s branches and production techniques got shot. The last thing that got worked on is the translation of the entire website, from English to Chinese.
Our ability to deeply understand an organization’s vision and values has enabled us to create a tailor-made communication project. Just like crafting a suit, we began with raw materials: a collection of memories, extensive knowledge, and experiences that needed to take on a defined form, a tone of voice capable of conveying an identity as strong as that of the Canali company.
