Australian Wool Innovation gets consumers back in touch with merino

Sponsored video

Some of our readers will have noticed Australian Wool Innovation’s merino promotions on our pages in Australia, the UK and the US. For a campaign, it’s newsworthy, since, as with the fragrances and fashion labels we cover, a great deal of effort went in to making it stylish, while conveying the feel of merino wool.
   Based around the tagline, ‘Merino. No Finer Feeling,’ the intent of the campaign is to educate consumers about the benefits of merino. It’s an ambitious task to convey the feel of the wool, but the team has accomplished this through visuals (shown here) and the video ads running around the Lucire website (below).
   Merino.com has also been revamped to coincide with the campaign, making sure online media are covered as well.
   There had been a concern among wool marketers that with disposable fashion, younger consumers were missing out on understanding merino. It may have hit the market at precisely the right time, as people begin to appreciate more lasting garments, rather than the consumerism-spurred fleeting nature of fashion.
   David Slijper photographed the campaign, with Simon Collins creative-directing. American model Darla Baker, represented by Élite, already the face of Nolita Hair Products and Royal Elastics, modelled. Shona Heath was the stylist on the campaign, while Adam Crystal composed the music. Dtouch provided the image capture and post-production facilities—as it has done for many luxury brands such as Chanel, Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, and top photographers including Steven Meisel, Mario Testino and Patrick Demarchelier—while Christel Chaudet of Spring Studios filmed the behind-the-scenes material.