• by Nina Lentini  @Nina_Lentini, April 3, 2008

Gentlemen may have preferred Hanes back in the Seventies, but today's young men prefer anything that's online--so the iconic brand is spending a lot more time bouncing around the Internet, particularly in places where there is men's lifestyle content to be found.

That means games and movies, videos and music about women and cars, risk and adventure. Over the last 18 months, Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Hanes has integrated its marketing, says Hilton Graham, senior brand manager on the Hanes brand, looking for entry to places where young men go to explore.

This week, it launches a campaign directed at men 18 to 34 on CraveOnline, including two videos in which men cavort in Hanes underwear. In "Paintball on Ice," for example, the men skate around obstacles on an ice rink, splattering each others' whitey tighties with colored paint.

Another, called "Soundcheck," involves music best heard by young men played by young men on a stage dressed in undies. The videos were created by Atomic Online with media placement by Starcom.

They are an extension of Hanes' "Comfort Soft" effort, which purports to make men comfortable no matter the situation.

"We want to build relevancy among a younger male demographic," Graham tells Marketing Daily. He describes older men as "cruise controllers; they know what they want," and says younger males like variety and are more interested in what's new, what's the latest.

A spokesperson for Atomic Online, a Los Angeles-based online media company that develops consumer Internet brands to connect Internet communities, says that CraveOnline includes content specifically for the demo Hanes wants. "We're one of the fastest-growing destinations on the web," she says, attracting nearly 26 million unique visitors per month.

"For advertisers, opportunities for sponsorship and creative integration go beyond the banner to make marketing messages an uninterrupted part of the user experience," says the spokesperson. "The originally created and produced Hanes campaign videos serve as a great example of this."

The brand team, along with CraveOnline, Starcom and Hanes AOR The Martin Agency, have been trying different types of creative and executions, including rich media, interactive, ads with content, sweepstakes, gaming and video to, as Graham explains, "see which holds the key in talking to guys or engaging them."