Levi’s 501, the original button-fly denim brand, needed to reclaim its relevancy among the younger consumer. The irreverence and realness it commanded in decades past needed to be translated to its core target – college-aged males. And only one agency had a true grasp of the complex humor of the 16-20 year old man. The Evolution Bureau.

Our research showed that these young males felt empowered to broadcast their lives to the world. They were, in a word, “unbuttoned.” And there was no way they’d rather broadcast their message to friends than via the form of a puppet popping out of a pair of jeans. Thus the creation of Unbutton Your Beast, a microsite that let users chose one of nine animated characters to pop out of the button-fly of 501 jeans and deliver a custom ecard message. As marketers, our goal is to make our clients famous. Unbutton Your Beast did just that. The buzz and and traffic to the site was phenomenal. On its first day the site received half a million visits. It was featured on the front page of the Drudge Report, picked up by local news stations, and garnered a mention in Jay Leno’s opening monologue on The Tonight Show.

Paul the Pincher, Sock Nasty, Trout Troutman, and Sir Reginald Mighty Pants became more than just puppets. For a month in the summer of 2008, they became the unbuttoned voice of a new generation.