The Campaign

Durex is an innovative brand with a wide variety of products to help couples connect. But 18-24 year olds regard Durex as a boring brand, for safety rather than pleasure. 70% claim to be sexually adventurous, and don’t see Durex as a brand for them. We wanted Durex to stand for fun. As this target market gets the bulk of its news and entertainment online, PR would crucial in integrating our message into mainstream news and blogs. We decided to create a completely new Durex product We created a new Durex product called Fundawear – his and hers underwear that uses a smartphone app and inbuilt touch actuators (in the underwear) to accurately send ‘touch’ over the internet. Partners can thus ‘touch’ their partner via the app from anywhere in the world. We released news of the world-first innovation via a seeding strategy, using the intended online coverage to bring in Australian media. We then launched a Facebook promotion, giving one lucky couple a chance to win a set of ‘Fundawear’.

The Brief

Research revealed an opportunity. Our audience’s first priority is adventure. • 70% when it comes to sex, are willing to try anything once. • 7 in 10 describe themselves as sexually adventurous (source Reckitt Benckiser). This insight paired perfectly with Durex values, personality, and mission. Durex is a sexpert that goes beyond just protection give the best sex experience they can by creating products to enhance sexual pleasure. At the end of 2013 the quantitative client objectives are: • Increase ‘innovative’ from 25% to 35%. • Increase equity ‘helps me achiever better sex’ from 21% to 40%. • Increase purchase intent from 60% to 80%.

Results

To date 244 mainstream news pieces, 107 video embedded in tech, news, and lifestyle media, a further 1,333 blogs covered the story, including Perez Hilton and dailymail.co.uk. Currently, the value of the earned media is sitting at over $1.68million reaching an audience in excess of 50 million. Durex ‘Fundawear’ was the most viewed YouTube clip in Australia in April, and is still attracting over 200,000 views daily. We have already received 7,422,351 youtube views with an estimated viewing time of 7,385,703 minutes watched. Facebook saw an 3978.6% increase in fan growth (versus 2 weeks prior) And a 489.9% boost in talk about Durex (ie people sharing liking, posting, commenting or sharing about the page) To date 23,000+ people have tweeted about the campaign, reaching a potential 82.5+ million followers. The most influential post was from Tech Crunch, with a following of 2.7million.

Execution

We posted a film on YouTube that featured a real couple testing Durex ‘Fundawear’ over Skype. We seeded this on Wednesday April 17th to news, tech and lifestyle blogs along with a sexy, provocative 60-second film explaining Durex ‘Fundawear’. The scale of the reaction online was enormous. The Daily Telegraph (London) picked up on the story within 12 hours. We reacted by moving our embargo forward, and giving Durex ‘Fundawear’ as an exclusive story to Fairfax Media, Australia’s largest news media network, who ran it nationally in publications (including Sydney Morning Herald and The Age). The following week the hosts of Australia’s number 1 morning radio show, 2Day FM’s ‘Kyle and Jackie O’, tested Durex ‘Fundawear’ live on air, reaching 5.3 million Australians. We gave another boost to the campaign by launching a Facebook promotion giving one lucky couple a chance to win a set of ‘Fundawear’.

The Situation

Only 35% of young Aussies know Durex as a condom brand. Our target of 18-24 year olds uses condoms because they feel they have to, not because they want to. This further enhances the belief that Durex is a brand about safety and not about pleasure. Our aim was to draw attention to Durex’s innovative products and show that the brand was always seeking new ways to help couples enjoy a better connection. This ground breaking new innovation repositioned Durex, garnering the enormous free media and facilitating enormous debate on Social Media that elevated the brand above our rivals.

The Strategy

There are now more long-distance relationships than ever (source iVillage; verified 31.7.2012) But while couples use this technology to stay in touch, they cannot physically touch. Until now. Using fully functional prototypes of the garments we planned to release news of the world-first innovation via a seeding strategy. As the majority of our 18-24 year old target consults local and international blogs for their online news and entertainment, our strategy was to seed Durex ‘Fundawear’ as an innovative new product announcement to news, tech and lifestyle blogs in Australia and international blogs and websites. We planned to approach Australia’s most prominent Sunday newspapers with an embargoed exclusive, and then follow this up by approaching Australia’s biggest morning radio shows. We also ran an early influencer strategy to further encourage social media interest. We had 11 sets of Fundawear tailor-fit for specific Australian media personalities with large Twitter followings.