Also in this special report:

– Brand building through TV advertising: Scudder highlights history, heritage: page 22

– Wal-Mart, our friendly neighbor from the south: The U.S. retail superpower has found television to be an effective weapon from the beginning of its invasion of Canada: page 26

A pool of television commercials to launch Fruit of the Loom’s women’s underwear in the Canadian market has grabbed female consumers by the seat of their panties.

Mike Sherlock, senior vice-president of marketing at Bowling Green, Ky.-based apparel manufacturer Fruit of the Loom, says the company’s share of the women’s underwear market in Canada is ‘up dramatically,’ compared with the period before the underwear was advertised.

As well, the commercials performed well in two sets of tests.

According to Sherlock, advertising research firm asi reported, using day-after-recall measures, the commercials scored in the top 1% of all spots the company had tested.

Not only that, he says, but a mall-intercept research study was done to compare Fruit of the Loom advertising created for the u.s. market to the Canadian advertising. The Canadian advertising scored much higher, says Sherlock.

More significantly, the ‘purchase intent shift’ of those who had seen the Canadian commercials was 23%, compared with just 9% of those who had seen the u.s. spots.

As a result, the commercials, created by the Toronto office of worldwide ad agency Leo Burnett, will begin running in the u.s. this spring.

‘The consensus is that the campaign works and is very extendable,’ says Sherlock, adding he is ‘extremely pleased’ with the work.

The six commercials, best described as cheeky, contrast apparently uncomfortable pairs of novelty panties – decorated with lace, tassels and animal prints – with pairs of plain, no-nonsense, 100% cotton, Fruit of the Loom briefs.

Each spot shows the panties moving through the frame on a clothesline – an uncomfortable ‘naughty’ pair, followed by a comfortable ‘nice’ pair of Fruit of the Loom.

The music follows suit, intercutting ‘stripper’ music with the product’s theme music.

In one spot, the clothesline advances to show four pairs of thong underwear, all set to the song, ‘Stuck in the Middle with You,’ followed, finally, by a pair of Fruit of the Loom.

It is at this point a female announcer says: ‘With more material in the seat, our underwear always stays comfortably in place. Sorry guys.’

The overriding theme, says Emily Bain, account supervisor at Leo Burnett, is that what men want in women’s underwear, and what women want in women’s underwear, are two different things.

Each spot concludes with the tagline, ‘Fruit of the Loom. Really, really comfortable underwear.’

Jeffrey Finkler, senior vice-president and associate creative director at Leo Burnett, says the naughty and nice creative approach evolved out of preliminary research that confirmed that everyone had underwear they were reluctant to wear.

In the case of women, these underwear had invariably been given to them by men, for reasons that were less than practical.

Not only do the commercials acknowledge the difference in underwear priorities between men and women, but they do it in a way that appeals to the target group – value-conscious women, 18-49, with an average age of 33, who shop in mass merchandise retailers.

‘We had heard from these women time and time again that they hated seeing models dancing around the television screen in skimpy underwear,’ Bain says. ‘Because really, those ads are for men, not for women.’

Finkler agrees. He says the Fruit of the Loom commercials are distinguished from those of their major competitors in a couple of ways.

‘There is no attempt to glamorize the product,’ Finkler says. ‘We begin, sustain, and end with what the product was meant to do – provide you comfort.

‘Everyone else is trying to add additional messages: you’ll look good to your boss; you’ll look sexy,’ he says.

‘Women spend enough of their day worrying about what other people will think. Their underwear should be something they do for themselves.’

Finkler says the commercials seem to have struck a chord women appreciate.

Sherlock agrees.

He says the fact the commercials do not use models allows the advertising to suggest a lot more than if they were to do the same thing using people.

‘If you were to have people dancing around in that underwear, you would have complaints about suggestiveness,’ Sherlock says.

Asked why the agency chose television as the primary vehicle to get its client’s message across, Chris Morandin, group media manager at Leo Burnett, says, because it was a product launch, it was essential to build reach as quickly as possible, and television allowed him to do that.

As well, PMB Print Measurement Bureau surveys showed that people who shop in mass merchandisers such as Wal-Mart, Kmart and Zellers – the only stores where Fruit of the Loom is sold – tend to be heavy viewers of television.

‘We tried to reach as many of them as possible, considering that the target’s awareness of the product was quite low at the time,’ Morandin says.

The broad reach media plan consisted of buying time on national networks and regional stations in programs that appeal to the discount shopper – principally, movies and sitcoms – plus a sponsorship on national specialty television service, the New Country Network.

The television buy was supported with transit and mall poster advertising that picked up on the clothesline visual.

Sherlock says from a creative point of view, television worked because of the simplicity of the message.

‘If you can distill your message down to something simple, television allows you to convey that quickly and efficiently, and reach a lot of people,’ he says.

‘We did do print, but the print kind of works off the tv. Some of it is very good, but you don’t get some of the humor and double entendre that you do in the tv.

‘The agency has also done a great job in terms of using music in each of the spots to appropriately reinforce the tonality of the commercials.’

Lorraine Tao, copywriter (who, with art director Elspeth Lynn, was the key creative person on the job), says the creative team wanted the advertising to be entertaining, and since tv is an entertainment medium, it was an appropriate vehicle.

‘And the music is such a big part of the ads,’ Tao says. ‘You just can’t do that in print.’

Asked whether he thought the agency could have achieved for the brand what it did, without the use of television, Sherlock is emphatic.

‘No, it would not have been nearly as effective,’ he says.

‘I don’t think we could have translated the feel of the commercials into any other medium. And we wouldn’t have reached as many people in as short a period of time.’

Finkler agrees.

‘Television will always be, in my mind, an incredibly effective way of building a brand,’ he says, although, given media fragmentation, he thinks it is fast becoming not enough.

Still, he says, tv appeared to do the trick in this instance.

‘The strength of this idea could be carried into any medium, but nothing gets you up there like tv,’ Finkler says.

‘It’s like a drug – what gives you the biggest high, the quickest?’ he asks. ‘Television.’

Since the commercials broke in July, they have won a gold at the New York International Film and Television Festival, and Mobius awards for tv campaign, multimedia transit and tv campaign, as well as three singles for individual spots.