Direct-to-consumer hosiery brand Sheertex is bringing its latest marketing to out-of-home and TV in an effort to differentiate itself from other digitally native brands. 

This is Sheertex’s first TV and out-of-home campaign after several years of focusing its marketing efforts solely on social media and other online channels since the brand’s founding in 2017. Founder and CEO Katherine Homuth sees the jump from online-only marketing as a way to break Sheertex out of the mold of “just another Instagram brand,” she said via email. 

“While [online] channels were effective for fast, broad awareness, they didn’t build credibility,” Homuth said. “Our hypothesis in launching this campaign was that consumers who also experience us through non-digital channels … would perceive the company as larger and more credible than those who only encountered us online.”

Sheertex's new “Alarmingly Strong” campaign has taken controversial statements, like “tested on animals” and “supports big oil,” and given them double meanings to demonstrate the strength and durability of its tights. The campaign’s series of images and videos display the brand’s tights being stretched, twisted and jabbed, coupled with these types of attention-grabbing statements.

In one visual, for example, the phrase “tested on animals,” written in a capitalized, bright red font, overlays the image of a dog pulling at a tight-clad leg. Another ad juxtaposes the statement “supports big oil” with an image of several bottles of olive oil suspended in midair inside the leg of a pair of Sheertex tights. These provocative statements were chosen to reflect “the extreme measures that [Sheertex has] gone through to get our tights as strong as they are,” Homuth said in a press release. 

OOH displays, created in partnership with Brooklyn-based agency Red Antler and designed to make consumers do a double-take at the controversial copy, will appear on subway platforms and trains in New York and Toronto. Additionally, video spots and graphics will also appear across Sheertex’s social media channels, with a 30-second commercial also set to air on TV.

Red Antler previously worked with Sheertex in 2020 to revamp the brand to focus on spotlighting its durable fabric. “We wanted to represent the toughness of the product by specifically choosing taboo headlines that most brands would never imagine using,” Jenna Navitsky, chief creative officer, Red Antler, said in a statement.  

These controversial statements have spurred “quite the (intended) stir” on Instagram, Emily Heyward, co-founder and chief brand officer, Red Antler, said in an email. She pointed to a post that depicts a stack of CDs straining against Sheertex’s tights with text reading “tested on endangered species.” Sheertex’s followers shared mixed reactions to the ad, with several applauding the play on words while others disapproved of the misleading pun. 

Despite the provocative phrases used in the campaign, Sheertex promises that “no tights, animals, exceptionally large cheese, olive oil, old TVs or pencils were harmed in the making of these advertisements."