Tuesday, 5 November 2013

Underwear brands bet on athletes too

You have seen some post on women underwear, but men are concern too by underwear. Let me introduce you to the men underwear industry and one of its strategies, which is to deal with sportsmen.

Sportsmen are famous and have a good image. They can be recognized all over the world by a lot of people. It’s maybe the category of people that is the most followed by the media and this will not stop with all the money invested in the sport, which become bigger and bigger every year, and the development of the social network for five years. They are now the” representatives” of a numerous brands. They are very bankable and brands don’t hesitate to invest in sportsmen, to work with them, to launch product with their name and even to launch brands with their name.

This phenomenon is a reality in a lot of market like the clothes, headset, razors and watches market.

What is interesting is that this strategy is also used by the brands of men underwear. We will see now why this strategy is efficient and why it’s the strategy of most of the brands that succeed in the segment of average price of men underwear (between 20€ and 35€).

First of all, the key success feature that men are looking for in underwear is the comfort. This is mandatory! If we buy an uncomfortable underwear, make sure that we will not wear it a lot and it will be the last time we buy this product, a product from this range or worst a product from this brand. This mandatory rule of comfort is true for all kinds of customers (men who like sport, young or older, wearing suits or jeans etc.). What’s the link between sportsmen and comfort? Simple, what can be more comfortable than an underwear worn by people who jump, run, sweat, slide, in it during one hour and plus? I mean they wear it during these extreme conditions without complaining (did you have ever seen a player disturbed by his underwear during a game? Except Rafael Nadal but for other reasons!). If sportsmen do so it will be a pleasure for us to wear it beneath our pant in a normal day at work or at school. Moreover, will never know but if you have to run to take the train for any other reasons (look a deodorant advertisement), it will be ok and you’re going to feel good in your underwear.

Secondly, by definition the underwear is hidden beneath your clothes (even if it is less true for men than for women and especially for the young generation!) but men also care about the beauty of their underwear. For intimacy, if someone sees it when you bend over or for yourself, if you care about you appearance you will care about your underwear too. There are two aspects that explain the reasons to choose sportsmen in order to have the image of a brand that sell nice and beautiful underwear. You cannot try underwear before you buy it, therefore the only image you have in mind is the one of the model/sportsman who wears it on the packaging, on the TV advertising you saw, in a big panel inside the shop or during a broadcasted match (yes, sportsmen are often topless inside the locker room or at the end of the game).
And to be honest, they wear it well and it fit them well. “A nice underwear on him will be a nice underwear on me, he is not a model just a player who wears affordable underwear”, the brand made it, you buy it, you like it and everyone is happy with this. The second aspect is the notoriety of the sportsmen’s’ associates to the product what gives a notoriety to the product. In fact a men underwear has not to be that nice on the contrary to women one, it just have to be not ugly which makes all the difference. The notoriety of the brand in addition of the notoriety of the sportsman is enough to justify the purchase and legitimate your choice.




To sum up, simple black branded underwear are the perfect mix of good underwear for men. The notoriety is very important in men underwear industry and the sportsmen help brand to get this notoriety.


Some brand and some sportsmen have pushed this strategy to its extreme with the creation of underwear brand name of famous sportsmen. We can talk about David Beckham and its body wear collection by H&M and Cristiano Ronaldo who just launched his own underwear brand in association with the Danish underwear manufacturer JBS Textile Group.










Romain Dive

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