Power Suit
M.J. Bale
Issue 31 | June 2014
Agency
Whybin\TBWA Sydney
Creative Team
Executive Creative Directors Matty Burton Dave Bowman Senior Writer David Roberts Senior Art Director Tim Chenery
Other Credits
Account Manager Kat Webb Agency Producer Nick Lilley CEO Paul Bradbury Eleven PR Rob Lowe Account Director Fiona Miliken
Date
April 2014
Background
In Australia, the suit market was dominated by global brands that aggressively promoted their international prestige. As a local company, M.J.
Bale was at a significant disadvantage. However, over 50% of M.J. Bale's suits were sold to men in the finance industry. And if there's one thing those people enjoyed, it was power. The challenge was to make them feel more powerful wearing M.J. Bale than any other brand.
Idea
The Power Suit allowed customers to act like the world's most powerful men, who never need to carry money. In collaboration with Visa and Heritage Bank, M.J. Bale embedded a contactless payment chip and antenna into the suit sleeve, enabling the wearer to pay for anything with an effortless wave of the arm. The suit was synched to the wearer's bank account, allowing them to check the balance, top-up or cancel their suit instantly via a mobile app.
Suit bags, doubling as credit card application forms, were mailed to high value clientele. The suits were also launched in-store and as part of a Heritage Bank competition, allowing anyone to own one of the world's most powerful suits.
Results
10 key influencers were given suits to trial, spearheaded by Executive Style, a print and online hub targeting finance professionals.
The campaign garnered 301,000,000+ earned media impressions from 140+ stories including TV features on the NBC Today Show, Australian Channels 7, 9 and 10 plus global coverage from Yahoo! News, CNET, Gizmodo, IT Wire, International Business Times & Daily Mail, all linking back to M.J Bale's website. The Power Suit created genuine desire for the brand and led an international conversation about stylish wearable technology.
Our Thoughts
What is doubly interesting about this idea is not only does it blast open the ‘wearable’ tech category and shunt it straight into shopper marketing, but it opens what we might call ‘the payment wars’. Which technology is going to become the global standard for this sort of tap-and-pay transaction? There are two that I know of, NFC and Beacon. In some ways, MJ Bale are the minnows in this experiment with some other very big fish circling each other, and them, cautiously.
And to think that just ten years ago, what ad agencies did was make TV commercials. Now they blend tech and product to build brands.