Charl Blignaut
Due to its logistic challenges and high cost, South Africa’s highly succesful “3D” Wonderbra advert has only appeared once in a limited run in Elle magazine. But that certainly hasn’t prevented the campaign from gaining the Johannesburg branch of ad vertising agency Hunt Lascaris TBWA multiple awards around the globe. So successful has the ad been that the clients are willing to invest in another magazine run later this year for “3D”, a campaign that is conceptually way ahead of contemporary Wonderbra campaigns in Europe and America.
“3D” consists of shot of supermodel Eva Herzegovena’s world-famous cleavage snug in a Wonderbra and, alongside it, a pair of 3D glasses. When you don the glasses the bra pops up at you like magic. So popular was the advert at the annual Cannes advertising awards this year that a queue instantly formed to ogle Eva. The ad went on to win a gold lion in the magazine category.
It was not the first gold lion – the cream of the global ad industry’s award circuit – to roar for Hunt Lascaris. The previous year the agency won another gold in the outdoor category. A large floor poster led viewers to two footprints. Once standing on the spot, you look down to read the copy: “If you can see your toes, you’re not wearing a Wonderbra.”
“3D” also garnered the local 1997 Loerie Grand Prix for magazine advertising as well as a Loerie for promotional marketing; it won the coveted AAA Magazine Advert of the Year 1997 award in London and won gold at the prestigious One Show in the United States.
All of this, of course, proves just how useful awards can be in the awareness and acceptance of “difficult” adverts, creative director Tony Granger says: “At Hunts we’re trying to make print quicker, trying to make a more immediate impact, relying on less body copy and a punchier, original concept.” Granger automatically approaches an ad from the point of view that modern consumers just don’t have the time to read reams of copy. “In order to break through the clutter and make an ad stick, you have to be helluva quick, helluva dynamic. “
Hunt Lascaris receives a bank of photographs from Wonderbra, which they then turn into a local campaign. So, while Europe prepares for another Diesel-type, trendy, boutique-retro Wonderbra campaign (see accompanying story), South Africa is looking to the future.
“The new European campaign seems so dated, so early Nineties” says Granger. And you can’t help agreeing with him. There’s none of the clout of the floor poster or of “3D”. The latter has tuned into a modern edge that is quick to get its message across.