Online intimates brand ThirdLove is going big for its first-ever out-of-home media campaign that includes subway station takeovers and a national television commercial.
Heidi Zak cofounded the brand in 2012, and is the firm’s co-chief executive officer. In a telephone interview, she said the company teamed with Andy Spade’s New York-based branding studio Partners & Spade for its first national brand campaign that’s expected to last over a year. Spade is also a ThirdLove board member.
Shot by Danielle Levitt, the aim of the nontraditional campaign — titled “To Each, Her Own” — is to capture the strength of real women, while also embracing their vulnerability, regardless of their size, age, ethnicity or life stage.
Spade said, “I truly believe it has the potential to make each and every woman it touches feel proud to be exactly who they are. ‘To Each, Her Own’ is a large statement that celebrates women’s individuality in a way that has never been done before.”
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The intimates brand, which touts the ability to offer a total of 70 size options, worked with a street-casting agency to find real women in Brooklyn, N.Y., for the campaign, according to Zak. The campaign launches Monday and initially will be largely visible in New York, after which it will begin a rollout across the U.S. beginning in early 2019.
Zak said the three subway station takeovers will be Spring Street and Columbus Circle, both in Manhattan, and Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, over the next 60 days. Those are the areas that the company chose for both density and diversity, she noted.
“We wanted one uptown, one downtown and one in Brooklyn… Each takeover will last 30 days, with the last one ending at the end of October,” the ceo said. The television spots will be comprised of 15 second, 30 second and one minute ads, with the ad spots running for a minimum of six months to at most one year following each metro market launch. Zak said the company will review the campaign response before deciding which metro market to roll it out to next. The campaign includes a woman breastfeeding her baby, and because of that scene some local television markets have already declined to pick up the advertisement, Zak said.
She declined to disclose the total cost — including content creation — of the project, but said the takeovers and ad spots alone were “over seven digits.”
As for why now for a national rollout, instead of its usual at-home catalogues and postcards, Zak said, “We really wanted to have something impactful and represent who we were as a brand. Something that we felt was really strong and unique in the market.”
Zak said she met Andy Spade over a year ago and noted how difficult it is to get them to work with a brand since Partners & Spade only works with a “small list of clients, [about] 15 a year.” And when the opportunity to work with Spade came up, the ThirdLove ceo said the decision was a “no brainer.”
“He’s a creative genius….He’s worked with many iconic brands out there and helped them become industry leaders….He was passionate about what we were building, taking intimate apparel — a sleepy sector — and turning it on its head,” Zak said.
When the project began, it wasn’t initially clear what direction the company would choose for its distribution. Zak said the company wanted to keep its options open.
“As we were developing the campaign, we weren’t 100 percent on the subway takeovers….Then after we saw the output, we decided to do out-of-home,” Zak explained, noting, “The campaign, when we saw it come to life, was a no-brainer [in terms of direction]. It was what we wanted to do for out-of-home and it is the right out-of-home content for us.”