St. John’s bra boutique The Boobie Trap has launched its first media advertising campaign, an initiative that highlights the horrors faced by women who wear the wrong bra size.
The campaign began Oct. 31 and includes online videos, print, out-of-home and point-of-sale creative developed by Target Marketing and Communications. Each execution features horror movie-style lighting and camerawork and identifies bra-related anatomical afflictions such as “quadraboob” and “shelf boobs.”
The print, out-of-home and point-of-sale creative adopts the same theme, with images designed to look like posters for fictitious horror movies with names such as “The Sagging” and “The Shelf.”
The campaign also employs tagline such as, “We can stop every woman’s worst nightmare” and “We can stop the horror.”
Jenny Smith, creative group head at Target, said women would recognize the horrors of ill-fitting bras as outlined in the campaign.
“[Bad bras] result in a number of very horrible and grotesque and frightening malfunctions, so the idea of the campaign was to draw attention to that fact,” said Smith. “I think 85 or 90% of women actually wear the wrong bra size and they experience these malfunctions, and sometimes they don’t know they’re showing off these malfunctions.
“When women get together, they talk about these types of problems.”
According to Smith, The Boobie Trap, which opened last year, approached her agency several months ago to develop a brand identity and advertising campaign. Smith said both sides were wary of the sex-appeal strategy that characterizes much of the marketing in the category.
“The majority of bra advertising focuses on selling sexy bras and underwear that will appeal to men but not so much to women,” said Smith. “In other words, they sell bras you’re supposed to take off. In contrast, with this campaign we’re trying to sell bras that are meant to be worn.”
Cinema spots will be added to the campaign later this year.
