IBKÜL
IBKÜL is an American sportswear and loungewear brand that focuses on cooling technology. During this internship I was tasked with turning technical performance into an apparel story customers could see fitting into everyday life.
Marketing and Design Intern
Vidha Hiranya, Nindy Ismail, Amy Florek
Figma, Adobe lightroom, Procreate, Omnisend
June - August 2026
Context
IBKÜL Products
IBKÜL had a product customers already valued: IceFil performance apparel. The technology offered cooling, moisture management, sun protection, and thermoregulation, but the marketing often explained the fabric more effectively than it communicated why those benefits mattered in a customer’s day. My main internship project was to develop a stronger consumer-facing direction for IceFil, alongside email, photography, video, and day-to-day brand work.
Challenges
Primary Challenge
Secondary Challenge
With the existing target audience, and materials we have, how do we turn IceFil’s technical performance into a benefit customers can immediately picture in their lives? This meant that IceFil tecnhology needed to be reframed in a way that was more relateable and represent the target audience's identity.
Ideation
Research through competitors
I studied Nike, lululemon, Alo Yoga, golf-specific competitors, and brands sold through US community and country-club channels. I also reviewed customer age data, product preferences, and purchasing patterns. IceFil and simpler, less patterned garments performed strongly, suggesting that customers already trusted the function; the marketing needed to better express the lifestyle around it.
Solution
Using information prioritization and data analytics
Customers do not experience technology as a specification. They experience what it allows them to do. For IBKUL’s customer, performance did not end after golf or a workout. Clothing needed to move through lunch, errands, travel, social plans, and family responsibilities while remaining cool, comfortable, functional, and presentable.
Research revealed a possible opportunity to target a younger athleisure customer, but the assignment was not a wholesale repositioning. I chose to work within the company’s current strategy and improve how IceFil spoke to the audience IBKUL already understood. That constraint led to a more useful question: how could the product feel contemporary without losing the customer who had already made it successful?
The campaigns
I developed the campaign from strategy through execution, including the creative brief, consumer-facing messaging, moodboards, campaign concepts, executive presentations, scripts, storyboards, B-roll planning, editing, social assets, and photography direction. Across the internship, I developed five integrated campaign concepts and used rapid AI-assisted prototyping to accelerate iteration.
Impact
Stakeholder feedback
My first IceFil concept had a clear narrative but leaned too heavily on explaining the technology. Stakeholders felt the voiceover sounded too much like an infomercial, while indoor footage did not sufficiently show the conditions in which the product’s performance mattered. I revised the direction to rely more on movement, outdoor environments, and everyday use, reducing the burden on technical explanation.
Beyond the campaign
I also coordinated photography planning for more than 100 men’s athleisure SKUs, building shot lists and merchandising standards for e-commerce and retail. Typography and writing were adapted for an older customer base to improve accessibility.
$9.7K
Attributed Revenue
53.9K
Recipients
47.9%
open rate
18%
Click Rate
Reflection
A summer internship I can never forget
This internship taught me to create without waiting for a perfectly defined brief and showed me how art direction is built through connected decisions across styling, messaging, e-commerce, and merchandising. Most importantly, IceFil taught me the difference between explaining a feature and communicating its value.
Let’s work together.
dhrishtyd@gmail.com