LINGERIE ADVERTISING IN AN UN-TRAVERSED NON SENSUAL PATH.

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Dr. Ajith Thomas wrote this case solely to provide material for class discussion. The author does not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective
handling of managerial situation. The author may have disguised certain names and identifying information to protect confidentiality.

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CASE
Alende, an artist by profession, is the director of ‘Alende designs’, an advertising agency based
out of Bangalore, India. He has a philosophy to live the life of brands for which he works as a
creative manager. While in the last assignment for a luxury nature resort in Kerala he turned
himself to an organic nature life, feeding on an all organic nature diet. He now appreciates nature
life that is valued by all guests in the hotel. This philosophy, he opines, connects him to the soul
of the brand and he can better connect emotionally to target audience. He believes that minimal
‘Photoshop enhancement’ on a model is necessary to make the brand communication as true and
genuine as possible. He talks about the emotional connects that brands should make and he feels
that this direction would better connect the advertised company to its customers.

This was when a lingerie manufacturer based out of Kerala, India decided to do away with skin
revealing women in their advertisements and brand communication. This new thinking was
based on the company’s Christian belief that revealing skin of women is sin. The director of the
company was stuck to this thought and believed that he can implement this idea, even if he
risked his revenues. He also knew that it is unheard of in the lingerie industry, to communicate a
brand without showing the fit and comfort of the product. While discussing how to get across in
communicating to customers and knowing the passion of Alende, the director board of this
company decided to try Alende designs as their advertising agency. They had tried a couple of
other reputed agencies recently and they were not very happy with their creative, force fitting art
work devoid of revealing skin of women (Exhibit 1).

Alende was given a briefing of what the company was up to just a week back and he is now
sitting engrossed in the thoughts, in his open office under the mango tree. However the thoughts,
were around the risk that he is going to take executing the first brief that the company has given.
The points in the brief made him thoughtful about the challenges he has to meticulously handle.

He always thought that non-conventional clients are the ones he would love to work with.
However, this is a little too much away from any conventions in advertising of women’s inner
wear and lingerie. He has to suggest some confidence in his approach to the situation within two
days, when he meets up with the directors of the company. Even though the brief represents an
opportunity to do something out of the ordinary, he is engrossed in thoughts on the option to take
a non-conventional emotional approach to advertise a commodity product such as an inner wear.
The fact that it is going to be a major risk for Alende designs as an advertisement agency and to
the company going to consider him without any safety net on the revenues, made Alende all the
more restless.

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To test his creative idea on his future directions, he developed a sample advertisement copy and
has taken feedbacks from his think tank group and it is not at all encouraging. The sad part was
that many of them laughed at his designs and commended that his creative are showing ‘sun-
drying’ of an undergarment. For Alende, he did not ever have the slightest of the doubts that the
route he had taken is wrong. While he was clear in his thoughts, he was slightly concerned about
how much the directors of the brand would be confused (Exhibit 2). It may also have an effect on
the company’s bottom lines and should be handled carefully.
Alende is sure that if this clean approach gets noticed, it will be the first of its kind in the lingerie
communication in the whole world. The question is how can he make his work accepted?

ABOUT THE CLIENT

In 2013, the directors of B-Inners, a lingerie brand owner were much concerned with two
philosophical perspectives that may affect their bottom lines. One perspective was from their
Christian beliefs, that revealing the body of women in public through advertising communication
of their lingerie brand was sinful and against the teaching of their faith. The second perspective
was an offshoot of a documentary in BBC that the directors had noticed on juveniles involved in
crimes in India. Although research hadn’t suggested any correlation between lingerie advertising
and crime, the directors of B-Inners decided to take stance that they would no longer use any
advertising that revealed the feminine body. Selling innerwear without using the traditionally
successful methods of using body revealing model is going to be a fundamental change for the
company. They tried their regular advertising agency and they miserably failed by clocking an
approximate revenue loss of 3000 million Indian rupees (1USD = 60 INR approx.) in six months,
as per the insider reports.

THE BACKGROUND
B-inners India decided to do away with all advertisements revealing the skin of women and
sensual looks, in their communication. The directors took this decision based on the Christian
belief that caught their attention, recently in mid-2013. They thought skin revealing
advertisement, featuring young women in creative, is sinning, in Christian faith. A reputed
advertising company which has been doing their create artwork took up this challenge
previously. They tried incorporating this new thinking into advertisement creative, from the new
briefings taken by their account executive. The briefings were nice and crisp, but the creative
that resulted, were seen force-fitting ideas into their routine advertisement styles. This
advertising agency does lingerie advertising for a few lingerie manufacturers in this part of the
world. How they do is was to collect photos from lingerie shoots and use it for various clients.
The photos shot were all sensual skin revealing models under the disguise of showing the fit of
the product. These are then incorporated with some advertisement layouts for various clients and
are then published with logos of different clients based on the advertisement requirements of
lingerie manufacturers. The agency always thought that undergarments being a commercial
product are the same and should always be sold on the idea of the fit of the product on women’s
body and their sensual looks. More over the creative group of this agency failed to convince the
idea that lingerie can be marketed without skin revealing advertisements. The new idea did not
generate any passion in the creative group and hence the advertisement creative that followed

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never captured the idea. Most creative just masked the model’s body in T-Shirts. The distorted
message that got communicated to customers was that the manufacturer has ventured into the T-
Shirt business (Exhibit 1).

THE PERSON
Alende’s philosophy was well connected to Mahatma Gandhi’s idea: ‘You be the change, you
want to see in this world’. This refers to the moral of the story of a son who was eating a lot of
sugar and the mother wanted Gandhi to advise the son to stay away from eating sugar. They were
asked to come back after three weeks, as Gandhi himself wanted to be qualified, before he could
advice others. Gandhi was also eating a lot of sugar at that time.

Alende was doing an advertisement for a naturopathy hospitality unit and the director of B-
Inners was so impressed by the way he was living the brand to develop creative, by following a
natural lifestyle, by turning himself into a vegetarian. Alende, a graduate from college of fine arts
and an artist himself, was very honest in his approach.

When Alende was awarded this assignment he thought it as an opportunity rather than a
challenge. The manufacturer was giving him an opportunity to do something different. He
enjoyed the tension and pressure behind the complex work behind the scenes. He noted that the
creative solutions came as a result of working towards identically different approaches that he
followed from other lingerie marketers. The work involved identifying the right model, finding
the stylist to manage the measurements, manage the shoot locations and directing the shoots and
creating the advertisement copy all by himself which made his life difficult. He took so much
effort, not because he did not have support staff around, but for his passion to do. He enjoyed
this work and was motivated by the idea of original outcomes that he expected.

All communications were cleared of sensual skin revealing communication. Model in their
natural looks and candid shoots did work very well. Models were asked to stay away from
sensual poses and looks. Alende did not do touchups and ‘Photoshop enhancements’ after the
shoot. The result to what he planned to do something different, came out very well, he thought.
(Exhibit 2). It is also to be noted here that the manufacturer was doing back to back
advertisements of a significant amount every year in edition of all famous women magazines in
the region (Exhibit 3).

THINK TANK RESPONSES

Unfortunately there were some hard responses from the think tank. The first was they thought the
creative to be some kind of joke and few even commended that, he kept the innerwear for sun
drying. The next was about the sober colors that he used in creative. They said the copies were
looking dull compared to what has been published in the past.

ALENDE DESIGN
Alende Design is a brand design firm, the brain child of a professionally qualified artist, which
started its operations in 2008. It has over several years worked closely with units in hospitality,
culture, fashion, accounting and education firms. Branding is about creating a signature
experience, through well designed products and its communication says Alende. Unlike many

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other advertising firms, which create sales pull through exaggeration of a single aspect of a
product, Alende uses beliefs, values and trust experiences of brands he works with, to create
emotional connect to customers with brands. He completely discounts the logic element and feels
that communication should be purely based on beliefs and ethical values of the brand owners.
Alende always work closely with clients to design and redesign brand experience and feels that
communication stay true to the brand essence.

Rebranding is just not a logo redesign or advertising redesign, but it has to be a holistic exercise,
taking the brand owner into confidence, thinks the team of Alende designs. Alende, owner and
creative director of the firm lives closely connected to nature and can be called an artist
‘extremist’. He lives the talk and believes that advertisement communication should be true to
the brand experiences.

INDIAN LINGERIE INDUSTRY

India has always in the past been a commodity market for Lingerie products. It was always
driven on price and profit margins for the channel members and never on values for the
customer. The market is still in its infant stage, as we know, until very recently lingerie
customers had to rely on grey imports which was irregular and always sold under the counter.
Due to the lack of quality consciousness customers and less number of organized players, the
potential of the market is yet to be realized.

Many international lingerie brands have come to India recently due to support they get from the
government and its recent open door policies. There is a shift from the unorganized sector, to
organized sector and many new brands are taking the lead in serving customers with new
patterns/models. Customers with higher disposable income, increased participation of women in
household decision making, preference to recognizable brands, greater awareness of the uses of
the product, rapid growth of organized retail and changing lifestyles have contributed to the
growth of this industry in India.

Lingerie market was worth USD175.9 million in 2003, and has almost doubled to USD370.3
million in 2008. Organized retail and multinational brands in the Indian market have contributed
to a substantial growth of the premium and super premium segment in India. Observers of the
industry suggest that there is a steady shift of customer’s loyalty to the next higher level brand.

International lingerie premium brands operating in India include Lovable, Enamor, Triumph,
Etam, Benetton, La Perla and About U. The mid-market segment is characterized by the
presence of national players like Maxwell Industries with Daisy Dee brand, Lovable, VIP,
Vanity Fair brands, Gokaldas Intimatewear with Enamor brand, Triumph International with
Truimph brand, BodyCare International, Groversons with Paris beauty, Poems, Sparsh and Misty
brands, Red Rose, Juliet, Page Industries with Jockey brand, Libertina, Blossominners with
Blossom brand, Vstar with Venessa brand, Rupa and Co. with Amul, Lux Cozi, Dollar brands
and many more.

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QUESTIONS

1. What do you think is the relationship between client and agency and how marketing and
advertising strategy are dovetailed?
2. Discuss the role of advertising in operationalizing the company’s marketing strategy?
3. Evaluate the process and challenges of account planning and creative strategy
formulation?
4. How would the creative imagination produce copy and visuals to support positioning as
decided by the client?
5. What are the challenges of communicating brands having strong ethical-value-based-
identity to customers?

REFERENCES

 http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/ourladyofweightloss/2012/04/breaking-the-sugar-habit-gandhis-
story.html
 http://www.alendedesign.com/Home.html

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 EXHIBIT 1
CREATIVE DEVELOPED BY MANUFACTURER’S REGULAR AGENCY

Source: Compiled by case writer from company database.

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 EXHIBIT 2
CREATIVES BY ALENDE FOR THE TINK TANK

Source: Compiled by case writer from company database.

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 EXHIBIT 3
TABLE OF ADVERTISEMENT EXPENSES IN USD OF THE MANUFACTURER

2012 2013 2014 2015

Jan 9750.00 8833.33 3666.67 12300.00
Feb 0.00 416.67 9005.00 16666.67
March 0.00 3416.67 0.00 355.33
April 13083.33 17983.33 15800.00 20333.33
May 15250.00 22416.67 27833.33
June 6791.67 7833.33 14308.33
July 5500.00 16166.67 24750.00
Aug 14000.00 14333.33 15906.67
Sep 3443.33 17916.67 13250.00
Oct 7100.00 12083.33 33641.67
Nov 9750.00 7833.33 7833.33
Dec 14000.00 30000.00 39058.33
Total 98668.33 159233.33 205053.33 49655.33
Legend: Amount in USD
Source: Compiled by case writer from company database.