Slim-Fast
"Please, not another &%$#* happy bride!!!"
"Please, not another &%$#* happy bride!!!"
Slim-Fast was in a rut. It was an older brand losing market share to sexy upstarts like Jenny Craig and the diet du jour.
Even worse, brand communications were running on a broken treadmill. Sad lady, insert product, happy lady, repeat.
Slim-Fast's creative team (two young ladies) were not a little offended at the template they were handed. And they simply couldn't abide the "show happy brides-to-be" brief for advertising Slim-Fast in wedding journals.
They believed that brides-to-be were deathly afraid of gaining weight. But that didn't mean a wedding journal should show real women distraught by extra pounds. They were already nervous wrecks - this could put them over the edge.
So my team found an excellent way to show an overweight bride, without showing an overweight bride. They simply used the lady on top of the cake as the unfortunate weight victim.
The resulting ads appeared in wedding journals before a major Toronto bridal fair. They were so popular that our client had them printed as massive posters in gilt frames, for display at the fair. They were promptly stolen, replaced, and stolen again.
Then they went viral.
Without us knowing, Slim-Fast teams in the UK, Australia and other markets annexed the ads and ran them.
You need a brave client to fight for a disruption like this. And our clients fought long and hard to have this template-breaker appear. In fact, they had to continue to fight hard even after it was proclaimed a success. Hats off to them.
As for our intrepid creative team? Their spirit paid off: these ads won at nearly every show in North America, including CA, the Clios and the One Show.
Even worse, brand communications were running on a broken treadmill. Sad lady, insert product, happy lady, repeat.
Slim-Fast's creative team (two young ladies) were not a little offended at the template they were handed. And they simply couldn't abide the "show happy brides-to-be" brief for advertising Slim-Fast in wedding journals.
They believed that brides-to-be were deathly afraid of gaining weight. But that didn't mean a wedding journal should show real women distraught by extra pounds. They were already nervous wrecks - this could put them over the edge.
So my team found an excellent way to show an overweight bride, without showing an overweight bride. They simply used the lady on top of the cake as the unfortunate weight victim.
The resulting ads appeared in wedding journals before a major Toronto bridal fair. They were so popular that our client had them printed as massive posters in gilt frames, for display at the fair. They were promptly stolen, replaced, and stolen again.
Then they went viral.
Without us knowing, Slim-Fast teams in the UK, Australia and other markets annexed the ads and ran them.
You need a brave client to fight for a disruption like this. And our clients fought long and hard to have this template-breaker appear. In fact, they had to continue to fight hard even after it was proclaimed a success. Hats off to them.
As for our intrepid creative team? Their spirit paid off: these ads won at nearly every show in North America, including CA, the Clios and the One Show.
