Bonds: The Boys, 1 [case]

Credits & Description:

Client: Pacific Brands Underwear Group Australia
Product: Bonds
Entrant: Clemenger Bbdo Melbourne, Australia
Idea: Clemenger Bbdo Melbourne, Australia
Production: Guilty Content Melbourne, Australia
Contributing: Finish Productions Melbourne, Australia
Contributing 2: Flagstaff Studios Melbourne, Australia
Contributing 3: Pacific Brands Underwear Group Hartwell, Australia
Editor: Oct
Creative Chairman: James McGrath (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Chief Creative Officer: Ant Keogh (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Sound Designer / Engineer: Paul le Couteur (Flagstaff Studios)
Planning Director: Michael Derepas (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Creative Director: Anthony Phillips (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Creative Director: Richard Williams (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Director: Tony Rogers (Guilty Productions)
DOP / Cinematographer: Marin Johnson (Guilty Productions)
Editor: Richard Hamer (Guilty Productions)
Producer: Jason Byrne (Guilty Productions)
Group Managing Partner: Simon Lamplough (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Business Director: Kellie Lennon (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Account Director: Grant Oorloff (Clemenger BBDO Melbourne)
Head of Marketing - Bonds: Emily Small (Pacific Brands Underwear Group)
Supporting Webpage: www.agencyawards.com.au/2016sp...
Describe the campaign/entry:
We knew guys don’t care about their choice of underwear, so we had to find a different way to get through to them. Something other than the usual product benefits of 100% cotton or a seamless stitch.
We realized that what guys do care about is the comfort of their balls. If we could get guys thinking about the impact a poorly fitting pair of undies has on their crown jewels they’d be more open to our retail messages.
So we created a pair of talking testicles to highlight everything that men’s ‘boys’ go through. From cold swims to bumpy bike rides to manscaping, we were able to remind men that their ‘boys’ go through a lot and deserve the very best undies. Shot on a shoestring budget our videos featured two men, dressed in lycra, sat in suspended wicker baskets talking to an offscreen charchter - the brain.
Creative Execution:
We shared the trials and tribulations of our ‘Boys’ via three long form videos on Facebook, before broadening the campaign to include 30” and 15” videos across multiple social channels and video-sharing sites. We then targeted men who’d viewed our videos with retail offers.
At launch we built up a loyal following by releasing the three long form videos, one every two weeks. Men loved them, shared them with friends and asked for the next installment. As we moved in to our conversion phase we used re-targeting to deepen the direct engagement with 30” sketches featuring our ‘Boys’ alongside retail offers – thereby converting sales through bonds.com.au. Aside from the specific retail offers, every video post also contained a link to the Bonds online store and retail offers contained within that environment too.
Describe the results in as much detail as possible.
'The Boys’ has been transformative for the Bonds Mens Underwear business. Although the campaign is ongoing in the fourth week of the current conversion phase Mens Underwear sales had grown by 161% and web traffic to the Mens Underwear page on bonds.com.au had grown by 420%.
The videos have been viewed over 6 million times to date nad total the campaign has delivered 22.8million impressions across all touch-points.
Bonds social media records have been smashed with likes, comments and shares far exceeding Bonds norms. An average cost per view for each video is $0.07 and engagement levels are above norms too with video completion rates above 50% - that statistic includes the three long-form videos.
Bonds tracking has shown that awareness of ‘The Boys’ amongst our target of men 18-39 is over 40%, which for minimal production and media investment is better than the results a big-budget Bonds TV campaign.
Bonds’ “The Boys” campaign was launched with three films via Facebook and YouTube. Precise targeting allowed us to cost-effectively reach our core demographic of men aged 18-39 with little wastage. At launch our goal was campaign awareness. We then released 12 more films, again via Facebook and YouTube, to convert awareness into sales. Each of these films contained clickable links to the Bonds online store.
Beyond the somewhat exciting (and daunting) task of driving FAME in a super-low interest category. We also had to drive sales into bonds.com.au.
Given our core demographic of Men 18-39 were our largest revenue opportunity, it was fortunate they were also the most engaged in social channels, therefore most likely to see, share and be motivated by our message. With a limited media budget there was no more efficient way of targeting this audience via Facebook. It provided the avenue to reach many of our men, and importantly provided us the technology for clickable links straight through to our e-commerce site.
If we could create content that was engaging and funny enough (and sometimes borderline inappropriate) hopefully our desired audience would readily surrender themselves to retargeting by watching, sharing, reposting and ultimately clicking.
And replacing old uncomfortable, undies with some new ones, delivered to their door.