Vivobarefoot's Colourful Animation Invites You to Free Your Feet

Vivobarefoot, the challenger barefoot footwear brand, has unveiled its first-ever brand awareness campaign, Free Your Feet.

Launching across paid and owned social channels, the campaign takes the form of a vibrant, analogue-meets-digital brand film. The narrative invites viewers to reconnect with the world, as well as their own bodies, by escaping the rigid, thick-soled, over-padded shoes that have been numbing us physically, and maybe even emotionally, for decades.

Developed by independent anti-advertising agency Thingy&Thingy®, on the surface, Free Your Feet is the joyful story of how we are all born with soft yet strong feet, ready to feel, move and explore, only for them to be ‘padlocked’ into restrictive footwear. But beyond the film, the campaign represents a deeper shift for Vivobarefoot: a move away from purely performance marketing towards engaging new audiences, including women and urban dwellers, who may not have previously encountered the brand.

Galahad Clark, Vivobarefoot’s founder, said, “When you free your feet, you free your whole self. We’re not meant to live inside boxes not for our bodies, not for our minds, and not for our feet. This movement is about breaking those constraints and reconnecting with what’s real.”

Adam Wagner, Vivobarefoot’s brand and marketing lead, said, “Working with Thingy&Thingy® has been an unlock for the brand. They’ve brought valuable ‘wood from the trees’ strategic thinking and exceptional creative direction - without the bureaucracy or wastage of the traditional agency model. It’s an exciting start to what we hope will be a long and creatively rich partnership.

Working with them on this campaign has also been as much an internal journey as an external one, inspiring a full website redesign and new ways of thinking about customer experience. It is also a statement of intent ahead of bigger investment in spring 2026, when the film will be refreshed and expanded across OOH, cinema, and live activations.”

Founded by Darren Simpson - former ECD at ACNE London and creative director at Wieden+Kennedy, and Thais Delcanton - also a seasoned advertising creative director, Thingy&Thingy® was born out of the frustration of formulaic industry campaigns and empty buzzwords and with a desire to bring bold, unfiltered ideas back to the heart of brand storytelling.

Thingy & Thingy®, known for their irreverent yet strategically sharp work, embraced the brief wholeheartedly, “We love working with brands that are challenging their category. And in Vivo we’ve found a partner who has the courage to stand out and do something different. We’re looking forward to continuing to help them grow. That and free Vivos for lyfe!”

The new campaign builds on Vivobarefoot’s mission to reconnect people to their natural potential and the planet, underpinned by research showing that wearing Vivobarefoot can increase foot strength by 60% in just six months. It’s also a challenge to an industry that produces over 20 billion pairs of shoes annually, with more than 90% ending up in landfill.

Free Your Feet is, in the brand’s words, a 'joyful F-you' to over-engineered footwear and an open invitation to feel more, live more, and tread lightly and freely on the earth