We noticed a colour chip in Pantone’s portfolio, which was outdated and exclusionary – a beige colour chip named Nude. Sparked by this mishap, we built our own brief and approached Pantone proactively, presenting an idea that would address an issue that should always be openly communicated, empower and enlighten people with the true meaning of the word nude, and boost sales of Pantone’s new B2B product. Additionally, we wanted to start a discussion within the industries that use Pantone’s products in their everyday work, and beyond. Even though Pantone didn’t initially have extra budget in their annual plan to create anything new, they soon realised this wasn’t something they could ignore. The purpose behind the idea outweighed any monetary dilemmas, and we soon got a green light to proceed.

This is Nude – a launch campaign built around striking portraits and a powerful message helped redefine 'nude', celebrate the beauty of human skin and sell a B2B product.

The campaign went live once Pantone had renamed their chip: Nude to Peach Taffy. This powerful name change was followed by a series of portraits and BTS footage of six individuals – each confident in their own skin. We shot the images using a stripped-down studio environment to bring out each person’s unique features – something that would stand out on a busy feed, and look fresh next to Pantone’s previous work.

The assets helped launch the expanded Pantone SkinTone Guide with 28 new shades, making it a total of 138 – all sampled from real people around the world. The portraits were featured in numerous touchpoints in order to reach our audience – all linking to or highlighting the product.

Nude has long been a loaded term. It stands for a variety of shades of, e.g. a piece of clothing that resembles the wearer’s skin, making it very personal. Our message had to be punchy: ‘This is Nude’ placed on top of a beautiful array of portraits, directing people to immediate purchase, and to simply stop and think about the word itself.

The target audience was professionals working with colour in beauty, fashion and design industries. We also wanted to reach people who feel that their personal version of nude is underrepresented. Our media strategy was to utilise Pantone’s own channels, pro-bono visibility and earned media, as the budget was minimal.

Pantone colour scientists sought out a variety of skin tone samples from volunteers around the world in order to update the SkinTone Guide – an expansion inspired and informed by customers seeking out specific matches that represent their communities.

Once the chip was renamed, Pantone shared the campaign in their own global channels – first on Instagram, which directed people straight to the campaign article (written by Pantone Color Institute Vice-President, Laurie Pressman) and the product itself on pantone.com. This was followed by other industry online media, who joined the conversation based on the assets that we pitched and distributed to them beforehand. The media were offered a set of campaign images joined with video interviews of our six individuals, discussing their relationship with the colour nude.

We managed to get pro-bono DOOH visibility on Ocean Outdoor locations, where we showed the campaign visuals and messaging. The portraits and article were also featured in an industry-wide magazine, Viewpoint Colour, as a double-page spread both printed and online in order to reach our core target audience.

The campaign was first launched in May 2023 and continued through to Autumn 2023.

From a small, yet, significant name change of a colour, and the supporting launch materials, the campaign gained attraction across the globe in industry online media and publications. We managed to reach 4 million people with our earned media approach. All of this with zero media spend and a very limited budget. ‘This is Nude’ managed to make nude the most inclusive colour in the world, and brought Pantone to a place where every brand, company and person should be.