The fashion industry in Europe had created a perception of female perfection that was unrealistic for women. This meant many women felt frustrated or even offended by the way they were portrayed.

Conversely, bonprix were perceived as being for 'boring housewives' which reflected modern society's dismissive attitude to women in their late 30s or 40s. Turning this perception on its head and giving the fashion industry (and its customers) a new relevant voice was where bonprix could tap into the cultural opportunity.

Our campaign celebrated women who were proud of who they are. Because we at bonprix are proud of who we are.

In an act of brand aikido, we took the negative things people said about bonprix and owned them - completely changing the meaning of “boring housewives”.

We mixed up, mashed up and remixed people’s negative comments into a song celebrating women everywhere.

We turned haters into our songwriters. The misconceptions into our lyrics. And the stereotypes into the glorious truth about “boring” housewives. The song became an anthem for real women, still listened to today.

As with all great songs, a music video accompanied our song. It celebrated stories of real women, showing off their amazing, quirky, badass, most-definitely-not-boring lives, shattering stereotypes.

We celebrated the wonderfully imperfect lives of women in every execution, and now that attitude not only guides every decision but has galvanized the entire bonprix business.

If bonprix was seen as for “boring housewives”, then our first step was to understand how the rest of the category was seen — maybe we could learn from them?

Well, no. The category, particularly our largest competitors, H&M and C&A, perpetuate glossy perfection. Their ads always show perfect women, wearing perfect outfits, doing perfect things.

Our focus groups, street intercepts and social listening revealed that real women saw fashion’s portrayal of perfection as “ridiculous”, “not at all representative”, and “actually offensive” to real women.

To real women, the status quo of fashion advertising sucked. There just wasn’t an alternative fashion brand to choose that wasn’t perpetuating fake, shallow perfection.

Our breakthrough was to subvert the entire category by celebrating the imperfection of real life. After all, real life isn’t perfect at all, thank god - that’s what makes it wonderful.

So we decided to celebrate the wonderfully imperfect lives of real women - particularly real women who shop with bonprix. They’re housewives, but they’re not boring. They’re awesome in their imperfection. And just like bonprix, there’s more to them than meets the eye.

A strategy that would disrupt the entire fashion category and how people saw bonprix.

We hit the streets of Europe with a vox pop to record people’s real reactions to bonprix. Then, we took their voice clips to the studio and mixed and mashed up them up with autotune and original sound effects. Some of the reactions became the chorus, others became lyrics, and keywords were used to punctuate the music. In the end, every layer of the track was a bonprix stereotype. We finished it off by adding an upbeat sound, and our bonprix anthem was born.

To connect to a wider audience, we created German, Dutch and French versions, each with its own bespoke remix of culturally relevant stereotypes. The music wasn’t something tacked on at the end, it became our entire campaign.

Women finally saw themselves represented in culture, through our campaign.

They said things like:

“Finally, normal women in a campaign… the song is awesome!”

And:

“You found humour in dealing with prejudice, rather than trying to justify yourselves. Props to you!”

Or very simply:

“Girl power!!”

We celebrated women, and then we saw results to celebrate too.

Awareness of bonprix increased by up to 200% in our key markets: Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Purchase intent is up 26% across those key markets.

And, for an online retailer, the crucial stat: we saw website traffic increase 27%. This translated to 5 million new website visitors.

They’re results that reflect bonprix’s turnaround, internally and externally. Employees are proud to work for bonprix, customers are proud to shop with bonprix, and finally, non-customers aren’t automatically rejecting bonprix.

Results we’re super proud of.

How’s that for a boring housewife?