JanSport Backpacks Belt Out Ballads for Gen Z Spot
What if your JanSport could talk? What if it could sing? This back-to-school season, your favourite backpack brand is bringing to life the unsung devotion of a bag that’s been with you through every ride, trip, spill, and meltdown, with zero thanks and zero complaints. JanSport’s ‘Always With You’ campaign is back, and this new chapter - created by comedy’s greatest ad agency, Party Land - turns the iconic backpack into a singing, deadpan antihero belting pocket-mouth ballads about the everyday chaos associated with always being by your side.
“Our premise is simple: Every JanSport bag has personality. And we figured, if it could sing, it would. We gave the bags voices, wrote original songs, and let them react to the everyday chaos they go through, like falling in love, warding off bug attacks, getting overstuffed,” said Matt Heath, co-founder and chief creative officer at Party Land. “The music, ranging from angsty punk to earnest power ballads, exaggerates the emotion, and the puppetry makes it feel weirdly real. It’s a fun and relatable way to reframe the product benefits and remind college-aged and older gen z that JanSport’s always there, forever a devoted companion.”
Last year’s 'Always With You' campaign recast JanSport from nostalgic legacy to gen z essential - named one of Ad Age’s Top 5 gen z marketing strategies of 2024 and hailed for its irreverent humour, music-first storytelling, and TikTok-native sensibility. The campaign drove a 385% year-over-year spike in engagement at launch and helped JanSport record its highest-grossing month in 57 years.
“JanSport has been with young people through decades of life’s messiest, funniest, and most forgettable moments,” said Alexandra Reveles, VP of global brand at JanSport. “Last year’s campaign helped reestablish our place in culture by unapologetically leaning into who we already are for our customers - loyal, reliable, and basic. That honesty resonated with gen z. This new campaign takes that connection even further. Our backpacks now voice the unfiltered, over-the-top thoughts of an emotional support bag who’s been through it all, and still shows up. Once again, Party Land brought it to life in the way they do best - through comedy, music, and just the right amount of weird.”
How JanSport and Party Land Cracked the Gen Z Code & Are Keeping It Going
This campaign is deliberately built for how gen z audiences consume, connect, and share. Designed for TikTok and YouTube, each :15 film embraces the absurd humour, emotional exaggeration, chaotic charm, and deliberately unpolished style that mirrors gen z’s own content.
Last year’s 'Always With You' campaign proved just how effective that approach can be. By ditching perfection and instead highlighting JanSport’s dependable, no-frills personality, the campaign hit a nerve with a generation that sees through polish and gravitates toward brands that keep it real. It also tapped into gen z’s preference for content that feels unserious but emotionally honest - funny, messy, and real in a way that traditional ads rarely are. This year builds on that proven strategy - same tone, same insight - delivered through a new cast of characters and songs.
Party Land’s use of humour isn’t just a stylistic choice. Studies show 78% of gen z are more likely to share ads they find funny, and 61% believe humorous brands are more trustworthy (Marketing Hustle). Just as importantly, the campaign reflects how the target audience see JanSport - not as an aspirational lifestyle brand, but as a dependable, everyday companion, without pretending to be something it’s not. What makes Party Land’s work especially effective is its ability to spotlight product benefits without feeling like a pitch. The backpacks don’t talk about their features, they live them melodramatically.
“Every JanSport bag in this campaign is a character - an overdramatic and overinvested character,” said Andy Silva, managing partner, Party Land. “We wanted to reflect what it means to grow up with a JanSport: it sees everything, survives everything, and holds onto your stuff - and your secrets - without judgment. By treating the backpacks like real characters with real emotional stakes, we could exaggerate the product’s loyalty, usefulness, and durability in ways that are funny, strange, and still endearing.”
Puppets and Practical Effects: Bringing the Singing Bags to Life
To make the bags sing (literally) Party Land and Impossible Studios turned to puppetry and practical effects rather than CGI to give each JanSport’s front pouch a surprisingly expressive mouth. The result? A weirdly lifelike canvas companion capable of singing, reacting, and emoting like the most loyal (and unhinged) sidekick you’ve ever had.
Every spot uses genre-based songs, written by Party Land and brought to life by music shop Mophonics, to heighten the comedy and tension of otherwise mundane scenarios. The bags’ voices were performed by untrained actors - raw, off-key, imploring - enhancing the campaign’s handmade, relatable feel.
By skipping traditional advertising tropes and embracing a weirder, more intimate tone, JanSport is reasserting its place - not just as a school staple, but as a cultural touchstone for 18–24-year-olds.
The campaign will run nationally with a heavy emphasis on TikTok, YouTube, and short-form video.
