Egyptian Brand Zee's Latest Campaign Isn’t Here to Force the Fit

The first thing you notice about Zee’s latest campaign is the motion, not the shoes. A breakdancer with a fractured hand, still spinning. An MMA fighter punching through silence. The footwear company isn’t asking people to look at the shoe itself; it’s directing them toward the momentum. Only then are they drawn to what’s on foot.

“Our tagline is make moves and everything we do is aimed at that. All the people we feature, all the people in our copies, they’re people who are making literal or figurative moves,” says Creative Director Aly Khalifa. “Either they’re doing something new, setting some sort of record, or they’re athletes. The idea is that movement comes first. The shoe is just part of the outcome.”
Khalifa followed this philosophy during Valentine’s Day, when he brought on social media star Om Gasser for a Shark Tank-style video in which the comedian critiqued designs showcased by creatives in her signature style. She sarcastically stung the presentations, commenting on the excessive use of hearts. At one point, Om Gasser is seen taking a bite out of the leather to check its quality.

For its latest drop, Zee has released five new sneakers. Two of them are unisex, and the other three are exclusively for women. Each serves a different purpose and is inspired by sports shoes, but none are intentionally made to be athletic — an idea that follows the creative direction of the brand as a whole.
Khalifa explains that in each of the five released or upcoming videos, he didn’t make the shoe the hero, instead focusing on making the person the hero, with the shoe as secondary. You see them moving, pushing, fighting, dancing — and only after that do you realise what they’re wearing, he tells SceneStyled. It’s as if the achievement shows up before the product does, a teaser for the idea that movement leads and everything else follows.

“We didn’t want to do the usual ‘look at this shoe’ thing. Nobody wants to watch a brand force a story down their throat,” he explains. “If I wanted to watch a story, I’d go on Netflix. What we wanted instead was to focus on five different individuals and make them impactful.”
As a local brand at its core, Khalifa explains that the company wants to champion local everything, including artists, producers, and local athletes. The dancer featured in the first video, Hana Helal, is one of the first female breakdancers in the region. The music she’s dancing to is a track by Taffy Raps, an Egyptian rapper making waves on the scene. Even the jewellery and nails were customised.

“It’s not just about selling a shoe,” he says. “It’s about investing our resources back into the people who are already making waves.”