Charity Planned Parenthood needed to address a big social problem, unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among 18-25-year-olds.
Research discovered that most women rely on their partners to supply condoms. Planned Parenthood's brand in particular was viewed as inferior because it was given away for free.
The solution was to rebrand Planned Parenthood Condoms specifically for women 18-25 and focused communications around the new condoms.
Re-branded as Proper Attire: Required for Entry, the condoms were positioned as a must-have fashion accessory that women would be proud to carry and that retailers would be willing to sell.
The new brand was launched as an upmarket brand in February 2008 during Fashion Week. By July the brand was being sold in 14 high-end fashion boutiques and hotels, a new website had launched and pre-orders of condoms from Planned Parenthood affiliates were double those of 2007.
In February the brand took over the inside of A-list nightclub Bungalow 8 for a month-long installation to coincide with the official launch and Proper Attire will launch its first advertising campaign to coincide with the Fall 2008 Fashion Week in New York.
The brand has also partnered with fashion designer Yigal Azrouël to launch a range of branded clothes as part of his Spring 2009 Womenswear collection at the Fall Fashion Week in September. There will also be special editions of condom packaging to match the theme of the show.
The aim is to produce new material every two months to be distributed both via the fashion community as well as to local health centres.
Proper Attire has helped Planned Parenthood garner a host of PR, featuring in Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Shape as well as the New York Times, the IHT and more than 250 other publications around the world.
Planned Parenthood branches normally order around 6m of their own label condoms a year, but when Proper Attire was released in 2008 the national office was bombarded with three times as many orders.
Thanks to Proper Atttire, today there are 12m more condoms in the purses of young women, making many times more impressions that safe sex is beautiful. To date, Proper Attire has been featured in over 250 publications around the world.
This year Proper Attire has partnered with Kiki De Montparnasse and the Thompson Hotel to create a hotel room intimacy kit. Because of partnerships like this, free condoms are now valuable commodities.