Short messages to sell smalls

Gossard has beaten the pack by being the first lingerie maker to use an SMS promotion to support its ‘G for me’ campaign, designed to encourage women to buy G-strings for themselves

Gossard has become the first lingerie maker to use text messaging as a major promotional tool.

The “G4Me” campaign, designed by creative agency WARL and executed by wireless marketing company Flytxt, complements Gossard’s television, press and poster campaign, which uses the strapline “G for me”. It is designed to encourage women to buy G-Strings for themselves.

Consumers are encouraged to send a text message to receive an M-voucher entitling them to &£1 off any Gossard G-string. They can text to receive as many M-vouchers as they like, but can only use one discount M-voucher per item bought. The campaign is supported by a new website (g4me.co.uk) created by WARL Evolution, the interactive arm of WARL.

Earlier this year, Gossard marketing director appointed the WARL Group to handle Gossard’s advertising and promotional activity, with a brief to eliminate the use of sexist imagery and instead to create “positive and confident” lingerie communications.

McKenzie says she is “particularly keen to see Gossard adopt a style and language aimed directly at women rather than the male-focused, ‘Hello Boys’ style the lingerie sector has used in the past.”

The website is designed to grow “organically” as Gossard introduces new ranges and styles. It features content and design that will be refreshed regularly to reflect each season’s new collection.

The site will also act as the main feed for a major database marketing initiative – billed by Gossard as the biggest customer relationship marketing exercise ever launched in the lingerie sector. This has been created by Evolution’s sister agencies, WARL Change Behaviour and WARL i-sight, to aid Gossard’s future marketing strategy.