Fruit of the Loom Opened a Fake Lingerie Store to Prove How Fancy Its Panties Really Are

Früt is the hottest new lingerie boutique in town. There’s only one catch—all the underwear it sells is from Fruit of the Loom.

In “Welcome to Früt,” a campaign by agency Ketchum, the packaged clothing marketer treats shoppers to a new twist on the old bait-and-switch: Opening a chic pop-up store that supposedly sells expensive designer pieces (which are actually just the same old panties you can buy in a bag).

A pair of case study videos claims consumers were lured in by airy fabrics and vibrant patterns, only to discover a dirty secret—they were falling in love with lowbrow underwear.

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Fruit of the Loom Makes Better Cooling Products for Your Junk Than These Two Idiots

CP+B goes with an elaborate anti-pitch in its work for Fruit of the Loom’s new Micro-Mesh Breathable Boxer Briefs, which are intended to keep guys a little cooler below the waist.

The campaign features the ridiculous and desperate co-owners of Josh and Donny’s Supercool Superstore for Men, which was apparently the go-to place for men’s pelvic cooling products before Fruit of the Loom came along. In a series of fake ads, and on a garishly moronic website, Josh and Donny reveal that they’re going out of business—because their stupid products are no longer selling.

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CP+B Breaks Out Plastic Pants for Fruit of the Loom

CP+B found an unusual way to promote Fruit of the Loom’s No Ride-Up Boxer Briefs: plastic pants.

The agency introduced the idea with a 30-second broadcast spot featuring guys wearing see-through plastic pants jumping around to prove the “no ride up” claim. But CP+B decided to extend the campaign in stealthy fashion. They created a fake fashion line called Plastique, which appeared in a large billboard in SoHo. Fruit of the Loom’s branding appears in the model’s underwear, and more subtly in the Plastique logo. The agency even went so far as to create a fake designer for Plastique, Frank La Rant, giving the character his own Twitter handle, website, an extensive backstory and even a documentary.

“We deliberately made it high-end fashion but with a question mark,” CP+B associate creative director Mona Hasan told Digiday.”We wanted people to say, ‘It’s plastic pants; could this actually be real?’”

Here's the Story Behind Those Idiotic 'Plastique' High-End Plastic Pants

Maybe you saw the billboard, or the documentary about Frank La Rant, or the lookbook. If so, you were probably disappointed to learn that Plastique, the high-end plastic pants supposedly designed by La Rant, aren’t real. And that the whole thing was a spoof by Fruit of the Loom.

The spoof by Crispin Porter + Bogusky originally came from the brand’s TV ad in which Fruit of the Loom purportedly tested its boxer briefs by having people wear transparent plastic pants. (If anything would make underwear ride up, it would presumably be that.)

From there, CP+B launched a full-scale high-fashion parody—poking fun at underwear brands like H&M that pretend to be all glamorous in selling the most basic attire out there. The campaign included fashion ads, outdoor, digital, a web experience, social media accounts, and even men in Plastique parading around SoHo and Rodeo Drive.

“Throughout the campaign, Fruit of the Loom held the position that they didn’t really get how you could call plastic pants fashion,” the agency says. “But it was very clear that they were behind (and underneath) this entire story, giving this long time underwear maker the innovation and style cred they deserved.”

See more from the campaign below.



The Right Underwear Makes You an Invincible Badass, Says Fruit of the Loom

Ever have that dream where you look down and realize you're wearing only your underwear? Not me. That dream's for losers. The people in Crispin Porter + Bogusky's first work for Fruit of Loom don't seem to mind it, though. In fact, they've never felt better.

One ad features a pit crew at a racetrack working in their boxers, as jokey narration assures us, "This crew's not having to recalibrate their own nuts and bolts in front of 20 million fans." In another, stuntwoman Mickey Facchinello, clad in bra and panties, leaps from exploding buildings and over exploding cars while shooting a ninja-commando movie, as we're warned, "Do not attempt unless you’re a professional on a closed course wearing the right underwear." Ha ha, "professional" is such a funny word. The "Start Happy" tagline reinforces the message that beginning with the right underwear makes everything better.

In a related promotion, the brand is offering free underwear to thousands of LinkedIn users who find new employment in October. (They might consider wearing proper business attire over those freebies on the first day, just in case.) 

The accent throughout is on comfort, never a bad strategy for the category, though the goofy Fruit of the Loom mascots are sorely missed. (Rock on, Giant Singing Apple—I love you, man!) The new stuff is certainly fun and fresh—one hopes it's fresh, at any rate. Still, it doesn't quite scale the dizzying heights of Paul Smith's recent underwear endeavor.