Hanes Asks Millennial Women to Mention Their Unmentionables

The brand's Undercover Color campaign introduces women to a new range of underwear and shares information about color trends.

Apparel brand Hanes is asking women a question that might get it smacked in a bar: What color underwear are you wearing?

According to the brand, the question is part of a campaign that taps into a millennial desire to share while also ensuring customers know about a new range of color, pattern and silhouette options.

The discussion, Hanes’ Undercover Color campaign, takes place on Twitter.

The Undercover Color website also showcases underwear color trends by region and individual color pages for yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue and green. It launched July 29.

To participate, fans tweet a color with the hashtag #undercovercolor and/or share one of the tiles from the site by clicking on the appropriate section of the underwear color wheel. The wheel sends users to the aforementioned color pages, which feature tiles and messages. Users can hover over each tile to reveal tweets like, “My derriere is cheeriere than yours,” for yellow and, “Vio-let me tell you a secret,” for purple.

“You can go there and see at any time what’s trending and what color is the most popular color at that moment,” says David Robertson, director of marketing for Hanes. “You can also say with the color wheel, ‘Here’s what I’m wearing now.’ There are lots of different images you can pick that are fun images and if you mouse over you can see the tweet you can share in this fun, lighthearted campaign.”

According to a Hanes rep, trending refers to the color most often shared at a particular moment in time. It is tracked by engagement on the site as well as on Twitter via #undercovercolor, she says.

Per the site, purple was trending in LA on August 6 while green, blue, pink and yellow were trending in New York. By August 7, purple was trending in New York, along with blue, red and orange, while green was trending in Chicago.

“A woman’s ‘Undercover Color’ is an important reflection of her personality and mood from day to day,” Hanes says.

What’s more, the brand says its “deep understanding of women’s changing taste towards more contemporary styles and shades” helped to inspire the new colors.

In addition, the brand also has new patterns and silhouettes like bikinis, boy shorts and hipsters, which have been introduced in the past year and which customers may still not know about, Robertson says.

“We really have refreshed our women’s underwear line and we want to make sure they know about that and give them an opportunity to interact,” Robertson says. “It’s a two-way dialog. The Undercover Color campaign is about looking for a fun, easy way for women to get involved and one of the things we know is millennial women have shown they are willing to share different things and information in social contexts and so we thought that provided a fun, lighthearted way to let them know what’s out there.”

Hanes has a series of TV ads to push the new products, as well as ads on Hearst properties like Cosmopolitan.com and MarieClaire.com, promoted tweets and Facebook posts and a billboard in Times Square over the Good Morning America studio that displayed trending colors and real-time tweets.

Hanes’ Undercover Color campaign also includes partnerships with so-called style experts, such as Robert Verdiand, and influential fashion bloggers such as Gala Darling, Jenni Radosevich and Karen Blanchard. The experts will provide color-inspired tips and trends, featuring their favorite Hanes products.

In addition, Hanes says it is giving away “stylish fashion finds” curated by Darling” each week through August 30.

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