Supreme uses a variety of marketing strategies to promote their streetwear brand, including collaborations with larger companies, an active social media presence catering to their target demographic of teenagers and young adults, and meticulously planned photography with consistent aesthetics. Their photos range from candid shots with a flash to more staged studio images, but all emphasize the rebellious nature of the brand through dark lighting and bold colors. Collaborations help expose Supreme to new audiences and social media engages their core customers.

1. THEORY Emma Garthwaite

2. WHAT AM I ANALYSING?
Because I'm looking at doing a street wear magazine for my FMP I
wanted to look more into the brands and things that promote these
brand. I want to get an idea of this industry so that I can really know
how to present my own brand and my magazine and so that the
things that I use can be different to the usual themes they use but
also still get some inspiration to incorporate into my work. It will be
very helpful to me to research these things and look into them further
as it will give me a further understanding of the industry as a whole
as they don’t use a lot of advertising however still get a lot of
publicity and easily sell out releases and charging a lot of money for
something so simple. In addition they often do collaborations with
fairly big companies as well which gets their name out there a little
bit more. Therefore I wanted to look at supreme as a brand and look
at how they produce things and get their name out there and whether
they are featured in things like magazines.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE
Their Social media presence definitely helps
them with their publicity they are very active
with things that they post on their social
media and I think because their target
audience is teenagers/young adults I think
this works very well with their work as that’s
who is mainly on social media for example
this is a few screenshots from their Instagram
and as you can see its very colourful which
will draw peoples attention in and will give
people more reason to click on it as with their
target audience colourful clothes are quite in
fashion at the moment especially with 17-22
year olds I would say. I think this is a very
clever way of marketing.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

5. HOW THEY STARTED This is on their website which gives a
little over view of how they started with
their skateboard brand and worked their
way up by getting the word out there
through skaters and clearly got their
name out their with word of mouth and
then when social media became more
popular that’s when they really started
to blow up. In addition they were one of
the first brands like this in New York
and they are quite unique with their
designs especially now that they have
more opportunities to change things up
by collaborating with other brands.

6. COLLABORATIONS
Something that Supreme does a
lot is collaborate with very big
brands they recently collaborated
the The North Face which is a very
large street wear brand that’s
been around for years. This is a
very good marketing scheme as
well because it gets their name
out their with people that may not
of heard of supreme but do follow
brands like North Face. This is a
very common thing for supreme
to do. They do this to be able to
get their name out there more and
appeal to a bigger audience.

7. COLLABORATIONS
They have also done
collaborations with Lacoste
which is a French brand which
started in 1933 and has got
fairly big recently. This will have
got Supremes name out to a
different audience of people
due to Lacoste not being a
streetwear or skate brand really
as it was founded by a tennis
player who was nicknamed “The
Crocodile” so its not something
fans of supreme would likely to
know and fans of Lacoste may
not know supreme so that gets
both the brands more publicity.

8. COLLABORATIONS
Their collaboration with Vans was
a more predictable due to Vans
being a Skate brand and that’s
how Supreme started out and still
is but is just more related to street
wear nowadays. Now that they
have started using some of the
designs that they have its
definitely more of a high end
street wear brand now but still
often involved with skating
because they have produced their
own skateboards etc. This again
was just a tactic to get their name
out there more and have two
brands that people love
collaberate.

9. COLLABORATIONS
The Nike Collaboration was
definitely seen coming even
though they had an issue at
first with copy right for
Nike. Nike actually released
the SB 94 which were
specifically made for
supreme which shows that
they already had a good
relationship from the
beginning.

10. LOGO
Red definitely connotes passion which amplifies the passion that the creators have for their brand.
However another way of looking into it is the fact that the way supreme started was a skate gang
and that could be seen and dangerous to some people as some generation look down on people
like this and the red will also connote danger therefore they maybe wanted to amplify that and put
that across for their brand because that’s who they hired and wanted people to have something to
become passionate about linked with something with what they were already passionate about
hence why they made it a skate brand and something they’d enjoy wearing and creating.
The font they use is very simple as well. It is Futura Bold Italic which is easy to get a hold of
therefore it was clearly something they’d done by just finding a font they liked. It has very much
became iconic now but I’m sure they didn't realize how big it was going to get at time.

11. LOGO INSPIRATION
People seem to analyse this art as a
message about materialism and how you
should rethink it. The simplistic manner
of the photography shows that she
wanted to create a out look on
materialism and how we should love the
simple things in life and not focus on
things that are expensive and think that
the things you buy define you. The
statement “I shop therefore I am” also
shows this as people often believe that
the things they buy make them who they
are. Supreme obviously wanted to show
that they werent creating supreme to

12. MISE EN SCENE – LEAST
PROFESSIONAL
As a brand, Supreme’s photos are very easily distinguished, This is
because of the certain photos that they use. For example these two
photos from their Instagram the lighting is dark and they have a
very obvious center stage piece that they want the audience to
look at. They are always quite busy photos unless of specific
models. There are a few different types of typical supreme photos
and this is one of the main examples. The low lighting with a flash
while taking the photo and a lot going on with a main subject in
the photo.
The first one clearly the main subject is the guy in the Raiders
hoodie and the second one seems to me like it’s the rug. However
these are not the professional shots they use. They have a mixture
of professional shoots and less professional and it seems like to
me these are less staged and more when they're just hanging out.
They have a more natural and raw look to them which I like. These
look less staged. The reason they do it like this is to be able to
make the brand still seem unique and like normal people wear it

13. MISE EN SCENE – LOOK
STAGED
BUT STILL CASUALThese are very similar but with more lighting. They are still dark
photos to match the aesthetic that the brand has which I quite like
as an aesthetic these are very simple images with only one subject
which makes the audience focus on the one subject. Colour wise
there isn't specific colour schemes they stick to because the top
photo is quite plain with a pop of colour with the shoes. The
bottom photo is although dark, very colourful so its hard to pick
out a specific colour scheme. I think these are obviously staged but
still look like its just friends hanging out in some places and
they’ve just done one shot and left it there. Which is highly unlikely
but that’s how these look. These are actually very planned as you
can see when you notice it.
For example the first one was more likely chosen because the two
most prominent colours are the yellow and purple which contrast
while all the other colours are muted in the background.
Where as the second one is perfectly planned because the graffiti
behind him match the sleeves on his tshirt therefore the photo is
all tied together.
They will do all of this to make the photos more aesthetic to the

14. MISE EN SCENE –
MOST PROFESSIONAL
PHOTOS
These are studio photos that have been taken. The
plain white background makes the subject the real
center of attention which is a constant theme but
this is completely plain so it draws your eyes to them
more. These are the photos they use to show off the
clothing which is quite obvious with the brighter
lighting and the plain background it works really well
to show off the clothes. The colour scheme seems to
be the classic supreme red which is what works in
showing their brand because in the streetwear
industry.
In addition the reason they are probably doing this is
because they are doing a collaboration with stone
island which are a hug brand and they do very
professional looking shoots therefore the reason
they are in the studio is because they're working with
Photo from
stone islands
Instagram

15. COLOUR THEORY
I think no matter what photo you look at they all
have a similar colour theory of the darkness of the
photos. Black connotes rebellion which was why
the brand started, to stop people rebelling and
give them a purpose to run a skate shop. As they
were just a young group of skaters that gave
themselves something to do by starting supreme.
I I think as well as the dark lighting the bright
colours really appeal to their young adult audience
because it contrasts the dark lighting. The reason
they will do this is again because they are still that
"edgy" skate brand which started out with the
young skateboarders who wanted to start
something. They will always connote the
rebellious side of these people because that’s who
they always will be.

16. PHOTOGRAPHY SKILLS
Their photography skills are very
candid and look very casual rather
than staged most of the time.
They are very casual to make it
look like its just friends hanging
out. When realistically they
probably spend hours on hours
shooting to get one image to look
right for them. This is because its
such a casual brand that they
don’t want anything to seem
forced. This is because again they
don’t want anything to feel forced
and they want it to seem like they
are just normal people. In addition
these people will still have the
same mind set they did when they
started the shop and they wont

17. WOMEN
Although there are some photos of women on
the supreme Instagram, they are very
sexualised. As they aren't wearing many
clothes and are highly sexualised. Even these
three photos of these women were very far
down the feed on Instagram so they aren't
very common photos but they are there. They
will do this because their target audience is
men and as it goes "sex sells" which is a sad
way to look at it but so many companies do it
nowadays. So although supreme are all
inclusive the women in this industry are very
highly sexualised and although this maybe is
an aesthetic they wanted, you don’t see them
making men suck their fingers for the
camera. Even small things like making that
girl wear nude coloured pants so it doesn’t
look like she's wearing anything on her

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