A cheeky poster campaign from Saatchi for YDE

YDE Managing Director, Paul Simon, and Creative Director, Sam Coleman, had a very specific brief in mind for the team at Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town: to introduce the new fashion season in a fresh, irreverent way that would appeal to a retail audience.

"The YDE brand is inspiring," says Conn Bertish, Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town. "It promotes fresh thinking and fresh design with a healthy dose of playful sexiness. Who wouldn't want to get spanky with it?"

The "Brand Spanking New Fashion" poster campaign depicts a girl and a guy with red spank marks in strategic places. The scene is very playful, sexy and retro-romantic with funky furniture, bedding and old school wallpaper, says Saatchi.

"The intention is not to shock," says MD, Paul Simon. "I think the reaction we are after is for people to see that we go out of our way to communicate what could sometimes be dull sales messages in a unique way that is always entertaining. We try to have fun and be clever and people appreciate that. We don't take ourselves too seriously and neither should the public," he commented.

Three variations of the poster have been created by Saatchi & Saatchi Cape Town and will be displayed in store windows of all 12 YDE outlets nationally for a period of eight weeks from today, 23 February 2005. Further to the posters, YDE will be giving away "Brand Spanking New Fashion" key rings to the first 400 customers to enter their stores during this period and patrons will also be able to play a "spanking" game on YDE's website, www.yde.co.za.

"We feel that the end product from the agency fits the brief nicely and that it will go a long way in achieving our goal. We find that when we communicate in a surprising way, it automatically drives word of mouth, which ultimately drives sales," concluded Simon.