Ann Summers picks size 16 ‘real woman’ as face of brand
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Ann Summers is to launch a Valentine’s Day marketing campaign starring a size 16 woman who won a competition to be the face of the brand.
The lingerie retailer invited women to enter a competition to find the new face of its brand campaign and launched its first ever TV ad starring 10 finalists.
The winner was chosen through an online vote on Facebook.
Lucy Moore will now star in the retailer’s Valentine’s marketing campaign, after getting 22% of the 30,000 votes.
She will feature in Ann Summers’ in-store campaign from 19 January and on the cover of the retailer’s catalogue and digital channels.
The campaign is the first time Ann Summers has featured a “real woman” in its marketing, and it follows the brand’s refresh last year and a raft of marketing initiatives designed to revive the brand.
Ann Summers is also working on a partnership with Shop Direct Group which owns Littlewoods and Very.co.uk, and charity Relate to carry out the UK’s first “sex census”.
Readers' comments (9)
Anonymous | Thu, 12 Jan 2012 12:52 pm
I can't help but feel a little hurt by the term "real woman" being used to describe a size 16. It somewhat implies that anything smaller is not a "real woman."
Not every woman under a size 10 is an anorexic or suffering from an illness, some of us are just naturally small.
Maybe a range of sizes of models would show that all women are "real women"?
I do wish this campaign and the lucky model ever success.
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Anonymous | Thu, 12 Jan 2012 1:37 pm
Regarding the above comment;
I don't feel they are implying smaller women are not real, more that it's a non-professional person rather than a model.
There are many size 16 women who are told thet are obese so they negative comments can go both ways- smaller and larger.
Everybody is real no matter what size or shape and should celebrate their individuality and differences.
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M Connaughton | Thu, 12 Jan 2012 4:18 pm
This move by Ann Aummers is good to see, and will likely generate the same level of brand advocacy as the Dove "real women" campaign.
Their very loose implication that thinner models/women aren't "real" will be quickly overlooked - by the common sense of an already (mainly insecure) target audience - and quite rightly so!
Using models who are representative of the wider population (target dem's) will generate positive interest in the brand, which should be seen in long-term sales. This however, will rely on getting the product range and price points right.
To Anonymous - who isn't employed by a fashion-house or agency, honest - who comments that larger sized models are somehow unprofessional: The implication larger models are, by proxy, "non-professional" is both insulting and bizarrely archaic.
This may be from a slightly indulgent perspective, but it's very refreshing to see campaigns begin to use healthier looking models (who wants to look at a stick thin model in her underwear anyway?!?).
More real women, please!!!
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Anonymous | Sun, 15 Jan 2012 9:22 pm
A real woman can be any size.
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Anonymous | Mon, 16 Jan 2012 1:00 pm
I hate to be the one to say this, but the average size 16 woman, target demographic or not, is - in health terms - overweight. By using models of this size (unless they are particularly tall, in which case a 16 can be a healthy weight), it further promotes the idea that 'the norm' is healthy, when in fact it isn't. Yes, the average size in the UK is a 16 for women, but that doesn't mean that it is healthy in the long run. I am sure it will work very well as an advertising campaign, I am just not sure if it is sending the right signals.
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Anonymous | Wed, 18 Jan 2012 4:42 pm
To the Anonymous poster above who hates to say that a size 16 woman is not healthy and is obese i would ask that you look
around at all the so called top models these
days and tell me that they are a healthy size!! Its about time larger women got a turn to be classed as models. Its disgusting that women of this size are discriminated against.
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Anonymous | Thu, 19 Jan 2012 1:14 pm
Ann Summers is just responding to what 'real men' have known all along - bigger women are much nicer to make love to than stick thin, skinny models.
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Anonymous | Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:47 am
"Re: To the Anonymous poster above who hates to say that a size 16 woman is not healthy and is obese i would ask that you look around at all the so called top models these days and tell me that they are a healthy size!! Its about time larger women got a turn to be classed as models. Its disgusting that women of this size are discriminated against."
I don' t think I ever suggested that size zero women were any more healthy than overwieght models, I was just trying to point out that we should not look to promote the idea that being overweight a good thing, it puts a massive strain on the NHS and is fundamentally unhelathy. I sit somewhere in the middle - I am a size 12 with a healthy weight and BMI - nobody ever seems to want to use people like me in ads, am I therefore being discriminated against? Surely we can find a happy medium, instead of always having to go to extremes?
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Heather | Thu, 3 May 2012 10:29 pm
As a larger ladie myself i think this shows a boost in confidence to see that larger ladies are getting a spot in the limelight, i think lucy looks sutnning,
true beauty comes from within, over weight / under weight no one cares, i wish lucy all the best and good on ya girl, most bigger ladies dont have the confidence to do what you have done.......... maybe because we get told we are obese!!!!!!
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