Storyboard: Getting close to Kiwi bloke

Before launching a campaign to promote its Bendon Man range, the underwear maker decided to get to the bottom of what Kiwi blokes wanted.

The challenge

Bendon Man is a range of men's underwear aimed at the man seeking a well-fitting, basic, everyday undergarment.

The brand was introduced four years ago, but little marketing activity since launch meant it had relatively low market awareness.

The design of a new-look range provided an opportunity for Bendon to relaunch the brand and raise its profile.

But how could that best be achieved?

The strategy

Research by communications and public relations agency WRC found images of bronzed, buffed, male underwear models were not what men liked to see in underwear ads.

This was a crucial insight for Bendon and remained at the forefront of the company's thinking as the campaign unfolded.

The campaign from WRC included press advertising, promotion at the point of sale, a sales incentive scheme for the retail trade and public relations activity.

The execution

The "Built for Down Under" advertising and point-of-sale material was intended to give "a glimpse of Kiwi life".

Photographs featured in the campaign were by photographer Chris Sisarich and showed a series of four "quintessentially Kiwi moments that any modern-day bloke worth his salt can identify with".

The PR activity around the campaign included a survey that aimed to get to the bottom of what guys think when they pull on their undies in the morning.

The great revealing undie debate ran on the Bendon Man website and attracted extensive media coverage.

The result

Media coverage generated as a result of the undie debate included stories in national newspapers, interviews with "Bendon Man" on radio stations throughout the country and online articles.

As a result of the campaign, sales to Bendon's trade customers were more than double what they were for the same period a year earlier.

The lessons Bendon said the research it commissioned at the beginning of the campaign, and the insights it provided, was crucial to the campaign's success.

With a limited advertising budget, public relations became an integral element of the campaign and helped to spread the message effectively.

A key finding from the debate was that Kiwi men do actually care about the underwear they are wearing.

The debate even identified and classified a new type of male: the retro-metro-undie-sexual - a guy who likes to think he doesn't care about what undies he wears, but really does.

While this particular breed of man doesn't like shopping for undies, he knows exactly what style he wants and will endure the shopping experience rather than entrust the task to a girlfriend or mother.