The ‘Impressions’ campaign for Boody was a photographic campaign that ran in outdoor and on social. The only copy on the campaign’s hero executions is the brand’s own tagline and logo, so art direction elements played an enormous role in how the message of the campaign and the definition of the brand was communicated to consumers.

This campaign built upon the cultural groundswell for female body positivity and diverse beauty that had been shifting the fashion industry for years, and reflected the cresting public interest in gender equality that defined the second half of 2023. The Matildas were front-page news, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was smashing the box office, and No Doubt’s Just A Girl was trending again for the first time since 1995. As a brand dedicated to social good, with women’s products designed for comfort above all, Boody was perfectly placed to contribute to public discourse about women’s bodies, how they’re perceived, how they actually are, and how they’re catered to by society.

Boody was on a mission to ‘own comfort’ in their category, leveraging the unique benefits of their bamboo underwear to drive sales. Research shows that women spend a cumulative 27 years in physical discomfort, and while much of that discomfort is attributable to biological factors no fashion label can solve, we also found that 50% of women take their bras off as soon as they get home, and that 30% of women say uncomfortable underwear negatively affects their mood.

But, with generations of women socially conditioned to believe that womanhood equals discomfort, accepting long ago that there was no alternative, women had learned to endure. They’d stopped talking about it. So, we resolved to get them talking by demonstrating on a large, public scale that women do deserve to demand better from their underwear drawers. And that Boody is that ‘better’.

By choosing not to show any product in our campaign and emphasising instead the marks left behind on women’s skin when they finally take their uncomfortable underwear off, we revealed the painful consequences of wearing uncomfortable underwear, and empowered women to demand more from their underwear drawers.

Through our art direction choices, we evoked restraint, sensitivity, provocation and defiance. Our photographer brought her outstanding empathy for the female body and an enigmatic, painterly quality to her work. Through lighting, we balanced relatable warmth with stark confrontation. We placed the branded ‘Boody Bar’ through the executions’ centre as an homage to vandalism, protest and censorship. Compositionally, we juxtaposed beautiful bodies with physical evidence of women’s restraint.