The brief was simple, yet bold: create a campaign that takes a stand.
Our client, the world’s highest-scoring fashion B Corp, had already empowered over 15,000 women and girls through their buy-one-give-one model, providing essential underwear to keep girls in school during their period.
But this wasn’t just about purpose.
With plans to scale from a small business to a national brand in a crowded category, they needed more than just an impact message – they needed a movement with a commercial edge to cut through.
The challenge?
Most women treat everyday underwear as an afterthought, grabbing multi-packs from the supermarket while their minds are on everyone but themselves. It’s not self-care, it’s survival mode – picking up school uniforms, thinking about dinner, running through their endless to-do lists.
But what if we could turn that around? What if we could get women to value their daily essentials as more than just a routine purchase, but as an investment in themselves? That was the campaign’s heartbeat: empowerment with authenticity.
The Big Idea: Confidence COMES FROM You
To compete in a category dominated by convenience and price, and get women to seek out ‘essential basics’ online, we needed to do more than highlight ethical manufacturing or sustainable practices.
We needed women to understand their own value – to show them that they are worth more than a £5 supermarket multi-pack.
The first thing they put on every day, and the most intimate thing they wear, should empower them – not be something they can’t wait to get out of!
We knew we needed to tap into the brand’s purpose, and weave in its use of real customers – no airbrushing, no professional models – because they’d already committed to showing diverse, unfiltered beauty after learning that 61% of adults feel negative about their bodies most of the time (UK Parliament).
This campaign wasn’t about the advertising industry’s standard view of “perfection”; it was about self-worth.
Authentic Empowerment, Not Empty Promises
The advertising world has a history of making women feel inadequate to sell a temporary fix.
From cellulite being invented as a “problem” by beauty magazines, to the rise of unattainable body standards on screen, the industry has long profited from undermining self-esteem.
Two-thirds of women believe that advertising is at least partly to blame for a rise in eating disorders among young women (37% between 2016 and 2019).
The Guardian’s research has found that 75% of women in the UK say “the way models look in advertising makes women feel bad about themselves and are harmful”.
Women over 40, in particular, are often the forgotten demographic – written off as no longer caring about beauty, fashion, or even their own desires.
Our approach was different.
This wasn’t another “you can have it all” message or a hollow empowerment trope that shifts the blame onto women.
Instead, we championed authenticity.
We knew that a pair of underwear, no matter how ethically made, won’t undo decades of harmful messaging.
So, we grounded our message in something deeper: Confidence comes from YOU.
This simple but powerful statement was more than a clever play on the brand’s name. It was a rallying cry for women to own their strength, their beauty, and their worth – on their terms.
Real Women, Real Confidence
We featured real customers in power poses – each one showing what confidence meant to them.
Creating a long-term campaign that looks and feels different every time someone sees it in their feed.
No preaching, no prescriptive ideas of what empowerment “should” look like – just a reflection of the many ways women can define strength for themselves.
This approach was designed to bring the brand’s mission to life in an authentic way that resonated, not just with the already-engaged audience but with new customers who can see themselves reflected.
It is empowerment made real, backed up by a 6 year strong legacy of empowerment through their buy-one-give-one promise.
Cutting Through the Noise
In an industry that often dilutes empowerment messaging with clichés, we designed a campaign that would cut through by staying true to the brand’s purpose.
As a small business, they couldn’t afford a large-scale campaign that would need a big budget refresh every 6-12 months.
We needed to give them a strategic direction strong enough to sustain long term.
With only two full-day photoshoots to work with, we had to generate enough photography and videography to create enough content to last a full year.
This meant every decision – every pose, every shot – had to be versatile, on-brand, and enduring.
When it came to creating campaign assets, instead of trying to cram in sustainability credentials, ethical production stats and social good into one message, we let empowerment take centre stage, knowing that this would resonate most with the audience’s key purchase drivers.
But before committing the brand to this long-term creative direction, we ran some initial messaging tests to validate its strength. We had to be confident that the positioning would hold up.
The results?
Our initial tests led to 97% increase in reach and a staggering 686% boost in engagement for static posts featuring real customers in power poses.
For video content, we saw Reels reach jump by 76%, with engagement up 77%, and watch time up by 144% – a direct result of prioritising empowerment over small business storytelling.
Watch time is a crucial metric that Instagram’s algorithm uses to decide whether to push your content to a wider audience. By increasing watch time, we ensured the brand was seen by more people organically – an essential win for a small business working without a big advertising budget.
Prioritising empowerment over small business storytelling wasn’t just a creative choice – it was a strategic move to maximise performance.
By embedding empowerment into the brand’s DNA, we ensured they had enough content to run fresh, diverse messaging for 12 months, making it not only more cost-effective but also more consistent.
“Brands that lay the right foundations and lean into consistency take advantage of memory encoding, cognitive ease, and familiarity bias and see exponential gains in creative quality, brand strength and business effects.” – Andrew Tindall, System1
Validating Predicted Effectiveness with Advanced Testing
To ensure our brand assets resonated effectively with the target audience long-term, we also employed advanced testing methodologies rooted in neuroscience and behavioural science. These techniques allowed us to assess how consumers interact with and respond to various elements of our branding.
Key Insights and Learnings
- Engagement Analysis: Testing visual assets helped us measure levels of attention and emotional impact, providing crucial data on which elements captured consumer interest most effectively.
- Memory Activation: The analysis revealed how well our brand elements activated memory retention, ensuring they left a lasting impression and contributed to long-term recall.
- Behavioural Predictions: By examining patterns of consumer reactions, we gained insights into predicted behaviours, such as purchase intent and overall sentiment toward the brand.
By integrating data-driven insights into the creative process, we ensured our approach not only captured attention but also fostered deeper connections with our audience and gave the client confidence that this shift in brand position would work for them.
This isn’t just a campaign, it’s the start of a long-term brand position.
With the foundation of authenticity, we showed that empowerment can be real, tangible, and impactful – not just another marketing buzzword.
“Confidence Comes From You” isn’t just a tagline – it’s a call to action. One that invites women to leave behind routine purchases for something more meaningful.
