Bonds has been Australia’s largest clothing manufacturer for over 96 years. It’s a brand worn by Aussies of all ages, from newborn babies through to grandparents. However with the introduction of cheaper private label products into the Australian market, bonds lost over $40m in sales last year.To help people reconnect with Bonds and choose history over price we allowed them to own a day in that history: their birthday. That’s 1 person born on every single day since July 1st 1915. They claimed their date in the timeline at WeAreBonds.com.au and in return, each person received a one-of-a-kind iconic Bonds tee, personalised with their date in our history.

Instead of using models, the campaign kicked off with a Casting Call on the Bonds Facebook page. From here, 63 ‘real’ Aussies were shot and featured in a huge outdoor and print recruitment campaign.Concurrently, a call to arms went out on digital banners, through eDMs and on radio encouraging people to claim their date in Bonds history.From here, PR picked up on the campaign and gave the campaign a further boost, to the point where there was so much traffic to the site that it was physically impossible to moderate the entries at the same pace as they were coming in.

With the project nearing completion, images from the site were pulled and used to create further content for Bonds, namely a 30 second ‘celebration’ TV spot featuring the faces of Australia.

As the project launched, over 20,000 images were uploaded within the first 24 hours. In fact, they were coming in so fast that we had and add an army to the moderation team to clear through the backlog.To date, the site has received almost 100,000 photo uploads, has over 500,000 page views, and on day 2 was actually more popular than Google (in Australia). It’s important to note that, with Australia’s moderate population, these numbers are fantastic.Since campaign launch, traffic to the Bonds online retail store has received a +400% increase in volume, along with sales peaks higher than those seen during the Christmas period (a first for Bonds).And most importantly, according to Australia Scan Data, Bonds has re-emerged as the country’s favourite clothing brand.