Fruit of the Loom Shares Rules of Underwear Giving
Banner ads and pre-rolls for Fruit of the Loom's new holiday campaign link to a quiz that helps customers decide which of their friends and family should receive underwear for Christmas.
Banner ads and pre-rolls for Fruit of the Loom's new holiday campaign link to a quiz that helps customers decide which of their friends and family should receive underwear for Christmas.
Just in time for holiday stocking stuffers, Fruit of the Loom has released “rules” for giving underwear, with a new digital ad campaign and interactive quiz.
The ad, featured on YouTube as well as Fruit of the Loom’s own site Start Happy, shows delighted families receiving underwear as gifts from parents and spouses, along with confused doormen, angry bosses, and stern policemen. It comes with a warning about giving underwear to the “wrong” people.
To create further engagement with the campaign, Fruit of the Loom has also created an online quiz to humorously help customers decide which friends and family members are close enough to receive underwear. It asks questions such as “Is this person a relative?” and “Does this person have the power to hire or fire you?” before ultimately giving a verdict as to whether the person is a good candidate for gift of underwear.
The goal around the campaign was to get consumers to see underwear as a viable gift rather than a humdrum necessity. A link to the quiz also offers an incentive to engage with often ignored pre-rolls and banner ads.
“Buying underwear doesn’t seem like such an exciting gift, but it is something that everyone needs and wants,” says Stephanie Wilroy, director of digital marketing and commerce for Fruit of the Loom. “But there are parameters around who you should and shouldn’t give underwear to, so we wanted to have fun with that idea, and thought a quiz would be something that the consumer could relate to.”
To incentivize the quiz, Fruit of the Loom is offering a $2-off coupon to users who “pass” by giving the right answers. To those who jokingly chose incorrect answers, the brand offers a $1-off coupon for other Fruit of the Loom items, like sweats and socks.
The brand has also rolled out the quiz for mobile, using a Tinder-style “swipe right” to vote to give a gift of underwear. Wilroy says the brand hopes that the mobile quiz will be novel enough to engage their target audience of women ages 18 to 49.
“It’s fun banner advertising,” says Wilroy. “I think the Millennial generation is used to swiping left or right to find the right person or the right answer.”
Fruit of the Loom has also partnered with many family-friendly and heavily trafficked holiday sites to promote the quiz, such as Ellen DeGeneres’ ellentube channel, which specializes in digital videos and games for users of all ages, along with sites like Walmart.com and Target.com.
Coupon app Ibotta is another partner, which gives users cash back rebates in exchange for watching a short video. In this case, when users watch Fruit of the Loom’s “Rules” video, they are rewarded with a $2 rebate.
Wilroy says the purpose of this campaign is to convert brand affinity to downstream action — namely giving underwear as gifts rather than buying them as an afterthought.
“For us it does continue a family-friendly tradition,” Wilroy says. “There’s a lot of brand affection when people think of Fruit of the Loom, it tends to bring a smile to people’s faces, so this extends that idea. The campaign is really a 360 experience, carried across from TV to digital to mobile, and social.”