Triumph ditches 'Kawaii' for edgier underwear ad in Japan

In its first campaign specifically for the Asian market, creative agency Odd London has created a colourful new ad for underwear brand Triumph's Japanese label, Amo's Style, complete with specific dance moves to perform in your smalls. 

Past campaigns for the brand were typically product- or season-based and hadn't changed dramatically since the launch of Amo's Style in 1998 in Sannomiya, Kobe. 20 years on, Triumph is facing ever-greater competition for market share as fashion brands move into lingerie and customers want greater choice—of colours and styles of underwear as well as new ways of wearing them. 

The new campaign flings the brand's previous prevailing theme of 'Kawaii'—a word that relates to 'cuteness' and often translates into light pastel colours and delicate trimmings—out of the window like an old brassiere.

The 15-second ad, which will run across TV, OOH, retail, digital and social for the next month, tries to encompass the brand's new determination to sell consumers a 'lifestyle' rather than just a piece of underclothing, hence the hashtag for the campaign, #LIVEAMOSTYLE. It features nine models of various ethnicities dancing (in their underwear, but not exclusively) to D.A.N.C.E., a track by the French band Justice. The choice of models and music, the agency says, was essential to "ensure cut through and relevance with the target audience". 

Odd London has also worked on repositioning projects for Tesco's F&F clothing brand, Levi Strauss and River Island. It launched in the US last year after winning the Perry Ellis account. 

Campaign's view: This is a slickly styled and produced video, which achieves the aim of looking like the girls are having fun dancing in fashionable clothes rather than specifically showing off their underwear. It's refreshing to see an underwear ad that isn't overtly sexy, as well. The campaign is well-integrated: a dedicated spin-off website, What's Amo, features interviews with the nine 'movers' and lessons on how to recreate the dance moves as well as products and shots from social. That Japanese consumers are ready to abandon the Kawaii culture trend anytime soon seems unlikely, but this new campaign retains enough of that theme—the 'Amo heart', for example—to appeal to Kawaii diehards as well.