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When we think of underwear campaigns, the mind immediately jumps to the age-old vision of scantily-clad Glamazons and dehydrated male models, overlooking passerby’s from their looming perch on massive, strategically placed billboards. While this methodology has long since worked for traditional intimates companies, one newcomer to the underwear industry has taken both the world and the internet by storm through its rebellious approach to marketing: meet Culprit Underwear, creatives David Dinetz and Dylan Trussell’s viral take on undergarments that’s changing the landscape of modern underwear, one pair of buzzy briefs at a time.
As the masterminds behind some of your favorite ad campaigns for huge companies like Beats by Dre, Mercedes, and Instagram – Dinetz and Trussell’s Culprit Creative has helped take established and burgeoning brands to new heights with their subversive approach to video. Bolstered by their origins in filmmaking — chances are, you’ve heard of their social media star studded film, Airplane Mode — Dinetz and Trussell’s awe-inducing aesthetic and need for a new creative outlet inspired the duo to launch their own brand on the back of their attention-grabbing content; and thus, Culprit Underwear was born.
Completely made and manufactured in America, Culprit Underwear embodies all Dinetz and Trussell’s signature stamps: meticulous design, a one-of-a-kind perspective, and quality production. Featuring a collection built for both men and women, Culprit has helped the world say bye-bye to boring underwear, replacing overdone tighty-whities with a range of subversive prints, colors, and subscriptions catapulting Culprit to the fastest growing underwear brand in America.
But the venture’s ever-expanding success wouldn’t have been possible without Dinetz and Trussell’s deft touch, lending their film-making prowess to the brand’s undeniably viral marketing tactics bolstered by the team’s video-focused forte. While the Culprit Underwear’s in-house commercial productions have set conventional underwear ads metaphorically and literally on fire, the brand’s popularity exploded at the crux of the international covid-19 pandemic when the duo once again subverted the traditional underwear advertising formula through their own innovative take on the classic undergarment billboard.
Primely nestled between the towering advertisements for luxury brands like Prada and Louis Vuitton, Culprit Underwear revealed its own massive Sunset Boulevard billboard in Los Angeles mid-pandemic, enlisting popular vlog squad member Nick ‘Jonah’ Antonyan as the face of the campaign. Rather than going for a traditionally sculpted model, Antonyan’s carefree physique and come-hither pose made for an eye-catching billboard that subsequently went viral, garnering huge attention on social media and a feature in mega-popular vlogger David Dobrik’s own YouTube videos. With the billboard’s more than 8-month reign dominating over the Sunset Strip, Dinetz and Trussell’s completely unique approach to marketing helped launch Culprit Underwear’s brand awareness into a household name, bolstering sales and establishing Culprit as the go-to source for cool underwear nationwide.
By leaning into its founders’ strong suits and proudly flipping the norm on its head, Dinetz and Trussell’s Culprit Underwear has provoked the American consumer into approaching undergarments from a perspective once-thought of as paradoxical from a sex-driven industry, an ethos that is sure to follow in the pair of creative’s upcoming ventures under the Culprit Creative umbrella, changing the world of modern consumerism as we know it, forever.
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