Internet forces man to stay in Zoiro innerwear for 24 hours

On February 28, a very peculiar phenomenon hit the internet. The Zoiro man (VJ Manish) promoting Denin, a denim intimate brand for men from Zoiro, the designer innerwear brand, was stopped from wearing any clothes and was kept in his innerwear for 24 hours.

People had to tweet at regular intervals of eight minutes when the Zoiro Denim Guy would try to wear clothes and stop him from doing so, effectively keeping him in his Zoiro innerwear all day to demonstrate the fact that Zoiro Denin is denim you can wear 24/7.

People could tweet or post on Facebook with hashtag #dontstopdenim and it was picked up by the DontStopDenim.com website and the message was conveyed to the Zoiro Denim Guy to keep him in his innerwear. People with most attempts to stop him won hourly prizes too. People even started asking the Zoiro Denim Guy to do stuff to entertain them while they waited for the eight minutes to run out.

In 24 hours, the Zoiro Denim Guy almost wore his clothes only twice before tweets and posts stopped him. He was asked to act like an Elf, Play Jenga with everything in the house, entertain his friends who would come over and make a prank phone call as requested by a twitter-user that ended up in a date for the Zoiro Denim Guy.

Describing the idea, Parikshit Bhattacharya, chief creative officer, TBWA, says, "Just the thought of denim innerwear makes you feel uncomfortable. However, Denin, the new range from Zoiro, is as comfortable as any other. To demonstrate that to a younger set we created #dontstopdenim challenging the internet to keep VJ Manish in his bare essentials for 24 hours. Internet won and in the process, Denin created perhaps one of the longest product demos."

Denim, considered to be a tough garment, raises doubts about the comfort factor when used for innerwear. Zoiro Denin claims that it is made of nylon micro-fibre to make it super soft. So, the agency decided to tell people that Zoiro Denin is perfect as an all-day wear. As per TBWA, the brief from the brand was to demonstrate live that wearing a denim innerwear is not uncomfortable at all, as perceived by many.

The activity, promoted online and in print media, generated major buzz with the hashtag trending in Mumbai in its very first hour. During the 24-hour period there were constant spikes in Twitter and Facebook activity with the hashtag from 12 pm to 12 am and resumed again at 6 am post the Zoiro Denin Guy's naptime. In fact, even the naptime was a challenge posted by the people asking the Zoiro Denin Guy to take rest.

Twitter saw a total of 1,350 tweets at last count for the hashtag with 811 tweets directly to the Zoiro Denim Guy. The activity generated 9,88,162 impressions with 4,11, 851 people reached. The website had 5,000 unique page views over the 24-hour period with 815 messages from Facebook and Twitter to the Zoiro Denim Guy.

"The core audience of 25-34 years interacted the most with the activity. On Facebook, things went beyond control with over 50,000 likes added in a 24-hour period and the engagement rate was a constant 8 per cent. Zoiro went from a relatively unknown brand to literally a name everyone knew about in just one day," Bhattacharya reveals.

Navinn Seksaria, managing partner, Zoiro Lifestyle, states, "The #dontstopdenim activity was an effort to reach out to the youth in a media in which they participate actively. More than traditional media, this has become the most important medium to engage with them."

Zoiro, in 2014, unveiled a line of denim innerwear for men called 'Denin', short for denim intimates. Created from a denim-like fabric designed by Claudia, Paolo and Elena from C-Work-S, Italy, the products even have lover's pockets at the back and digitally printed belts to increase the denim feel.

The latest offering in the Indian market for men has a distinct shorts-like look and the product is such that it can also be worn indoors or as beach wear. Zoiro has been launched recently in India as the country's first ever designer innerwear for men.