The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2021
RIMOWA's Never Still: Patti Smith's first brand poem urges the world to travel again
Patti Smith's first brand poem anchored RIMOWA's Never Still; owners Rihanna, James and Federer carried it into a global travel conversation.
RIMOWA
What it had to solve
In uncertain times — the pandemic era — RIMOWA, a brand defined by its Never Still ethos, wanted to usher in a new era of travel and offer a message of hope, showing people it was time to start moving again.
How it works
RIMOWA has long defined itself by a Never Still ethos — the idea that movement is part of living — and the pandemic made that idea the brief. In uncertain times the brand wanted to usher in a new era of travel and offer a message of hope, showing people that it was time to start moving again.
The campaign called on four RIMOWA owners — Patti Smith, LeBron James, Rihanna and Roger Federer — and made Smith the anchor. She wrote an original visual poem, her first piece of writing for a brand, and her words became the campaign's spine.
Contextual excerpts of Smith's poem were placed in iconic locations around the world, turning the media plan itself into poetry in public space; separate films followed each owner's renewed relationship with travel after Covid, from Smith's ode to New York to Rihanna's desert return.
D&AD records the campaign as sparking a global conversation about what travel means in modern times — showing people it was time to move again — and keeps the work in its awards archive under Writing for Advertising.
Why it lands
- A poem performs the message instead of announcing it: hope about travel is felt in Patti Smith's words rather than claimed by the brand.
- Her 'first ever piece of writing for a brand' made the collaboration news itself, so coverage carried the campaign's premise.
- Owners Rihanna, James and Federer put the ethos in the mouths of people who actually travel, not actors who pretend to.
- Placing poem excerpts in iconic locations turned out-of-home into part of the artwork, so the idea lived in cities, not only in films.
What it did
D&AD records that the campaign sparked a global conversation about what travel means in modern times and showed people it was time to start moving again; the work sits in the D&AD awards archive under Writing for Advertising.
What you can take
When the world needs an emotion, commission art instead of an ad: let an artist make something for the first time, let owners carry it, and the message travels as culture.
Since then
Never Still became RIMOWA's standing campaign platform rather than a one-off film. Later chapters kept the same stories-of-purposeful-travel frame with new owners — Kylian Mbappé in 2023, then Lewis Hamilton, Rosé and Jay Chou in 2025 — and the original 2021 work was archived in the D&AD Annual 2022.
Sources
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