Remember Creative

Bonds has just released the creative for their new Originals campaign, reviving their tagline from the 80’s, “Gotta Be Bonds”.

The creative was shot in Coober Pedy and pays homage to those hot summer days when it’s just too damn hot to wear clothing.

There are several spots featuring sweaty models mowing ‘lawns’, sweeping dust and lugging around bags of ice, which will all run across TV, outdoor, social media and online.

But it was this ad which caught our collective eye.

The ad begins with a clammy brunette blasting into the fictional town of “Cold Springs”, complete with her leather driving gloves and black Bonds Originals two-piece.

The sticky supermodel pulls up to a petrol station and exits the car, at which point the camera flashes across her toned stomach, and focuses in on her pert posterior.

She plugs in the petrol nozzle, glances over her shoulder and spots a local woman, who appears to be sporting Kmart Originals.

The Bonds clad babe relishes in her choice of underwear and smugly looks towards the horizon, at which point we’re reminded, it’s “Gotta Be Bonds”.

Comparing one product with another is commonplace in the world of advertising, because it helps explain to consumers why one product is superior to its inferior competitor.

Although here, it’s not just the comparison between two products, rather the comparison between two women.

This tactic would be familiar to any viewer of daytime TV infomercials. The before shot will depict a vitamin D deficit, disheveled woman who is void of any makeup, on the left. And on the right, after using a life changing serum, cream or machine, she has transformed into a thinner, tanned and far more made up version of her former self.

In Bonds’ case, a similar approach has been adopted, except for the fact that losing weight, getting a tan and reversing the ageing process is a highly unlikely side effect of sliding on a pair of Bonds Originals. Some consumers are easily led, but no one is falling for that one.

Lastly, the average Bonds customer looks more like the undesirable in this ad, rather than the strutting glamazon – so it must be asked, what’s there to gain from alienating your core base of customers and portraying them as vagrants?

So for these reasons, this week, it’s a Marketing Mistake.

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