for the Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit, May 6-8 in Palm Springs.
Brands are always trying to get in on Web trends as a way to seem cool and relevant to their audiences. Hanes is the latest brand to try its hand at this content tactic with its new Web video series.
With the the help of its agency 360i, Hanes is promoting its “ComfortBlend“ underwear with a “destruction video.” In case you’re not up on these, destruction videos, like this video of a water balloon hitting the ground in slo-mo, are all the rage these days. The Hanes series is called “Soften the Blow,” and it features videos of silly destruction experiments that involve ComfortBlend clothing items being wrapped around objects to, you guessed it, soften the blow.
The experiments include things like catapulting antiques at a target made of Hanes shirts. The goofy host of the series, Al Lenderson, is meant to be a funny version of those serious and enthusiastic hosts of shows like MythBusters. The comedy in these videos stays in the expected range of brand humor — it’s pretty cheesy. These videos don’t achieve the same funny seriousness that the Oreo experiment parody videos did.
Image via Shutterstock/wandee007
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