Can science create hype like streetwear?
Problem: Mid-2020. The world was rapidly changing amidst the COVID-19 global pandemic, and we noticed that education was evolving, almost overnight.
Beyond people learning how to bake bread or memorizing choreography to the latest TikTok dance, the school system itself was turning digital faster than expected. Kids were now responsible for logging on (and staying on), teachers and professors were not showing up to class, parents were going back to school and relearning decades of forgotten knowledge in order to keep their children’s education moving forward. It seemed the system was inching steadily away from cultivating the next generation of inquiring minds by checking the boxes of attendance over rising to the challenge of a new medium for learning.
At Seed we’ve always used Carl Sagan’s iconic quote from Pale Blue Dot as our North Star: “Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”
But this struck a deeper cord in this changing world where your house (your bed, your living room, wherever you could find space to learn) had become a classroom.
Experiment: (HOME)Room—A streetwear drop that could only be unlocked through learning science.
Role: Director of Storytelling + Experience
1.) Conceptualization of Campaign, 2.) Research, 3.) Creative Direction, 4.) Comms + PR Strategy, 5.) Copywriting
A streetwear drop that could only be unlocked through learning science.
We’ve all witnessed it — the frantic rush to the latest “drop” from the fashion world.
The sneaker community laid the foundation for hype — lines wrapping around the block to the Supreme store in SoHo, frantically refreshing web pages for the latest pair of Yeezys, the masses jumping on every pre-order list — it’s a first-come, first-served method that uses a formula of urgency, scarcity, and influence to amass crowds and dominate headlines.
No doubt, the method works and has brought the niche of streetwear into the public eye, but none more than in high fashion — Virgil at Louis Vuitton, adidas’ collaborations with names like Alexander Wang, Yohji Yamamoto, Rick Owens, and Kanye West, the Kruger-red Supreme stripe on everything from luggage to toothpaste — the drop system has shifted cultural norms, and created insatiable demand in ways the collective “we” couldn’t have anticipated as it expands into new territories
Our asked a question: Could the same thing be done for science?
Our hypothesis was straightforward — could we make learning science as urgent (and exciting) as the next sneaker drop?
Experiment: Drop knowledge (with merch).
In collaboration with LA-based sustainable designer, Come Back as a Flower, we brought the formula of streetwear and wonder of science together.
Tapping into the nostalgia of our early education days, (HOME)Room was dreamed into reality — an interactive 6-part science course on the circularity of life through the lens of microbes. The reward for finishing? A limited-edition, co-design sweatshirt by Seed and Come Back as a Flower. And we made it completely free (for adults and kids).
The course itself explored our planet, with an emphasis on plant and soil ecosystems — from the microbes in the ground and how they influence plant root systems, fungi, and the growth of some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems — to the human microbiome and the trillions of microbes that call us home, coming back full circle to the phenomenon of the necrobiome, the community of microbes that help decompose all living matter and, in some cases, redistribute that matter back to the soil to be used by other organisms.
With curiosity as the only form of currency accepted for this experiment, participants had to complete all the chapters, ace a quiz module at the end of each which unlocked a six digit code, and submit that code within a short drop window.
The result: Over 500 “graduates” submitted within the first few seconds of the drop window opening with the total reaching over 1,300 to submit their full code. In no way the Internet-shattering results of a highly anticipated drop, but an insight into a new way of weaving education into the fabrics of other industries.
We live in such an on-demand world, everything is made available to us with the touch of our fingers so, a higher barrier of entry (six science quizzes) for getting the next big drop creates an element of friction — but we were overwhelmed with the amount of people who opted in for six days of science classes, quizzes, at-home experiments that had them smelling cheese and holding dirt. Many forgot they were learning to win a sweatshirt and found, instead, an unfettered joy in learning itself.
Covered In:
Chapter Highlights
Each gallery below is scrollable and contains highlight selects from each chapters 1-6 of (HOME)Room. The full chapters can be found on Seed’s Instagram Highlights @seed.
Perhaps our most interesting insight from this was not the overwhelming swell at the opening of the drop window, or the celebrity endorsement, or the engagement rate, but the palpable shift in perspective we saw in a community, and the shift in perspective they gave to us as a brand.
We ended the course with this question to our community: Do you think, in some way, we can come ‘back’ as a flower?
Over 1,300 long-form responses to our open-ended question revealed a profound insight from our audience that allowed them to engage on such a human and emotional level with a brand through the pixels of a phone; stories of those who felt a deeper connection to themselves and their own personal health, to our planet and the responsibility we have to it, and a more comforting outlook on the idea of death and the continuation of life—an often neglected part of our shared experience and one that had a lonely and finite presence during 2020.