Puffer jackets are back, this time with cockroaches

Uncommon’s latest work ‘Wearable Mythology’ is the second campaign in as many weeks to display unusual items in a puffer jacket. Still, we’re here for it.

Hot on the heels of the completely unrelated, but undeniably reminiscent, campaign by KFC and Here Be Dragons, Uncommon has used the popular clothing garment to parody a bit of team rivalry.

Uncommon’s ‘ROACHCOAT’ is a transparent puffer jacket packed with, yep, 2,000 live cockroaches.

The film to contextualise the jacket is fronted by a fan, who strolls around New York showing off his sartorial monstrosity to bystanders. The jacket was created as a response to a viral insult aimed at the New York Knicks, and it reframes “cockroach” from an insult into a badge of resilience.

The creative here is all very 'Uncommon', skirting the boundary of taste and provocation.

The jacket plays inside a broader fictional identity created in the ad for the “New York Cockroaches”.

Of course, there’s a deeper commentary going on in that the bold clothing choice doubles as a metaphor for New York’s unabashed self-image. 

The cockroaches are chosen as a reflection of the city’s unconquerable ‘difficult to kill’ spirit (“You can’t kill what won’t quit,” is a key line).

My journalism teacher once said that ‘people are interested in people’, and that’s a simple truth that the ad world has embraced in the AI age. Uncommon’s stunt plays into our collective appetite for content that has a defiant human story and an interactive, physical element.