Brief
Uniqlo was launching its Star Wars: Rogue One UT collection at 311 Oxford Street, its London flagship, for the film’s December release. Disney’s biggest release of the season, on the busiest shopping street in Europe, in the run-up to Christmas. The store needed to feel like an event, not a shop.
What We Built
I brokered and ran Novelist’s live set inside the store: the booking, the terms, the running order and the artist side on the day. NTS filmed the performance and published it as a session.
The decision was the pairing itself. A Lewisham grime MC, performing on a retail floor, inside a global brand’s biggest licensed launch of the season. In 2016 that wasn’t the obvious booking. It was the right one, because it gave the launch something the product alone couldn’t: a reason to walk in that wasn’t the product.
Outcome
A flagship launch turned into a live moment, and an NTS film that carried it well beyond the people standing in the store. It sat in a run of brand work for Novelist across that period, alongside Casio G-Shock, New Era, KFC and Boiler Room × O2, and set the terms for all of it: culture first, and the brand earns its place by backing the artist on their own terms.
