I spend the rest of my life talking about marketing from a company perspective, so it seems only fitting that today I find myself writing a piece on marketing as an actual bra consumer. As the full bust bra market grows, more and more companies are bringing out new options that claim to be the result of constant innovation, superior materials and construction that will change how we full bust women feel about our bras. Every new bra seems to represent some new never seen before style or a new age of full bust bras - so why are we all still talking about the bras we'd like to see?
The answer seems to be that the full bust bra world is full of companies marketing to customers who are seen as unique unicorns in the lingerie world, while customers see themselves as just another group of consumers who would like pretty underwear. These effusive marketing strategies are actually offputting, at least to me. Today I'm going to go over some great and not so great examples of how bras are marketed to full bust women, as well as talk about full bust customers and their reactions to various marketing tactics.
The bra at the top of the article comes from a new company called Bombshell Boudoir, which specializes in what they describe as the underserved 30DD to 36F bra market. Aside from the bra at the top looking at little uh...familiar, let's say, this is marketing talk that we've all heard before. I'd love to see more fashionable and supportive bras for that particular market segment, but I'm pretty sure most consumers don't believe this kind of talk when we hear it anymore. It's easy to feel overloaded and discouraged when all full bust bra companies seem to be saying that full bust customers are so special while replicating the same marketing speech to make us love them.
The second bra is from Creme Bralee, which has actually come a long way in terms of making cute and fashionable bras at amazing price points. They're another company that specializes in the C through G range and markets as a company that supports and loves women in this size range. The hitch? They add a surcharge to any bra over a DD cup. I believe that Creme Bralee really does love their customers and this market segment, but it's hard to feel respected as a customer when you see a surcharge on certain cup sizes and not others. Why not make every cup size the same price and make them slightly more expensive? Why not spread the cost out over the whole range and not make some people feel like outliers?
These companies aren't alone in attempting to make customers feel special in some awkward ways - you can see it all over the full bust bra market. Here's the key: full bust customers want to have the same choices as everyone else and be treated the exact same way. After all, most full busted women have had enough bad experiences standing out in a crowd due to their figures. Why would we want our bras to give us that same awkward feeling?
Bardot Plunge Lace Bra by Claudette
That said, it's not all bad news. There are some companies who are marketing genuinely innovative products to full bust ladies by doing what every other lingerie company does to sell lingerie to customers. Claudette is a great example of this. They make bras that range from A through G and use multiple models to show off the full range. They also don't go around putting yellow highlighter around every larger cup size. To Claudette full busted customers are the same kind of customer that their C cup customers are, which is smart and refreshing.
Bravissimo specializes in a huge range of cup sizes and has been putting out products that no one else has for years. This year they've taken their wildly popular built in bra tank top line up to a J cup and released new colors for the new size range. This is the image they're using to promote it. The best part about this image is that this is one of those standard summer outfits that everyone can (and wants) to wear. It's also the kind of outfit that you've been dreaming about wearing for years if you're full busted. Instead of marketing this tank top with a speech about innovation, the implied marketing message is smart and simple: now you can wear the same things in the summer that all of your friends do.
I've featured this Addicted Half Cup set before, but it's another great example of bras that came out with little fanfare and really rocked the full bust lingerie world. Everyone was excited about this set because it was a look that full bust women hadn't had much access to before. Figleaves didn't market it in any special way: they just added it to the lineup and let the lingerie speak for itself. Even with very little marketing, it got a ton of buzz and I suspect sold extremely well as a result.
When you try too hard to make a certain market segment feel special, it can sometimes spill over into making them feel singled out instead. What popular full bust companies have in common in their marketing is really basic: they make full bust women feel included rather than excluded. Lingerie is a big world, but fashionable and supportive bras are something that lots of consumers want. By focusing on those principles rather than on technical achievements or pandering to a certain size range, the most popular full bust companies have created a real following that makes their customers feel just like everyone else.
How do you feel about the way full bust companies market their lingerie? What attracts you to a lingerie marketing campaign? What turns you off?