A new Spanx campaign features a nude Ashley Graham, who made headlines for being the first plus-size model to be featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue in 2016, to promote its new white pants. It's the first campaign for Spanx since private equity firm Blackstone acquired a majority stake in the functional fashion company last October at a $1.2 billion valuation.

The white pants, part of Spanx's new “On the Go” collection, are made of “silver lining technology” which makes the pants non-transparent, which is a big concern for women who don’t want their pants to be see-through. 

“I can assure you it's an extremely embarrassing thing if someone can see the color of your underwear and it's a very common experience,” said Katy Alonzo, principal at Blackstone. ”It's actually a pain point that keeps women from buying white pants. A lot of women have negative emotional experiences wearing white pants.” 

The campaign from independent agency Gut uses the tagline “White pants you can underthink,” which was an insight that the agency pitched during the two-month review process handled by Avidan Strategies. The work will use a “traditional channel in a non-traditional way,” said Jonny Bauer, global head of brand strategy and transformation at Blackstone, who left Droga5 after 13 years last year to join the firm.

The campaign will include a teaser video which will be shared on social digital channels today. The video starts off with the line “Only one thing stands between the world and Ashley Graham’s nudes.” The video then goes on to show her during a photoshoot where she can be seen posing nude behind a sheet of the Spanx patented fabric, which took seven years to create. 

“The thing to remember about the technology is you can't make white pants thicker with more white and solve for the problem,” Alonzo said. “White won't solve for white. So they actually had to add an opaque layer that they actually bonded to the fabric. It’s gray and because gray light won't pass through.”

On Wednesday, a billboard to be displayed in Los Angeles is set to show a nude Graham covered by a large blanket of the white fabric; on May 14, the blanket is set to be taken down, revealing the nude image.

“A disruptive brand requires disruptive communications,” said Fernando Ribeiro, global chief strategy officer at Gut. “They have been disruptive since the beginning, they created shapewear as a category 20 years ago.”

This is the first pitch process that Bauer and his team had been a part of that involved speculative work, he said. “We didn't ask for a full campaign,” he said.

“We asked for thoughts on an approach and it was the strategy that actually won. We still are trying to create a really favorable set of circumstances for agencies and bucking with traditional demands of crazy amounts of work and rounds. The decision was made after one round of initial thoughts on how [the agency] would approach this task. We are committed to making, working with Blackstone companies as painless as possible.”

While this represents a one-off project with the brand, Bauer said Gut will likely play a part in future projects for Spanx.