Marketing campaign Path is our evaluation of a few of the greatest new inventive efforts from the advertising world. View previous columns within the archives right here.
For years, Manscaped’s advertising has toyed with the reality about its below-the-belt grooming merchandise. That is meant leaning into raunchy innuendo, whether or not boasting about “Large Groomed Power,” pairing Pete Davidson with Santa Claus, tapping into post-match UFC speeches or heading to the Ball-ber Store.
Manscaped’s newest marketing campaign, “The Boys,” provides a cinematic aptitude and hanging visible metaphor to its promoting by imagining male genitalia as a pair of an identical “boys” that accompany males wherever they go. The advert follows one man — with a pair of boys with unruly hair and lengthy beards — as he walks on the seashore, goes for a jog, hangs out in a scorching tub and celebrates at a marriage, earlier than he makes use of a Manscaped trimmer to offer them a clean-shaven look.
For Manscaped and company Pereira O’Dell, the marketing campaign’s central concept started life as one picture of a person together with his boys on a seashore. The picture, which might find yourself being virtually precisely the identical as the ultimate product, was a direct winner within the room.
“The moment you noticed it, you could not assist however snicker, it was so disarmingly dumb. It was the factor that caught our consideration internally, immediately,” stated Jason Apaliski, government inventive director at Pereira O’Dell.
“The thought got here out of one of many largest challenges whenever you’re speaking concerning the groin: mainstream channels aren’t gonna allow you to present that space or present that product in motion,” the company government defined. “How can we showcase that in a means that is significant and memorable, but additionally true to not simply the model, however the viewers of males? In some methods, that space is an extension of your self.”
An inflection level
“The Boys” launched this month and features a nationwide broadcast spot and an augmented actuality (AR) lens on Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. Further parts together with digital and social activations, model accomplice collaborations and out-of-home installations will roll out by way of the yr. The marketing campaign comes at a pivotal level for Manscaped, which has expanded past a major direct-to-consumer focus to develop its retail footprint.
“We began to see a necessity to vary our advertising method,” stated Manscaped CMO Marcelo Kertész. “When you’re attempting to scale on efficiency advertising, it reaches a degree the place scaling is not environment friendly, You must begin to work the highest of the funnel and make the model a bit extra entrance and heart and convey extra folks in.”
Together with the shift from efficiency advertising to model constructing, the omnichannel model marketing campaign additionally follows the current launch of a brand new line of its flagship Garden Mower trimmers and the model’s enlargement this yr into Walmart. This confluence of things made it the right time to launch a marketing campaign that embraces what Kertész calls the model’s “tremendous energy”: the flexibility to facilitate troublesome conversations round a delicate subject.
“That is an space that you should have a means in; it isn’t simple to speak to folks concerning the groin. We enterprise into hundreds of various metaphors, each verbal metaphors and visible metaphors, and sooner or later, you assume that perhaps we exploited every part,” the chief stated.
The thought of “The Boys” serves as a Computer virus, giving Manscaped a humorous metaphor that would resonate with shoppers and provides them house to embrace new concepts and probably change their behaviors round grooming.
“The second we noticed that one body, I keep in mind saying, ‘That is the only funniest body that I’ve ever seen in my historical past at Manscaped.’ That is the place the marketing campaign was bought. This has potential, this has energy,” Kertész stated.
The foundations of the sport
For the model and company, the subsequent a part of the method targeted on not messing up the central concept, from script improvement by way of manufacturing and launch. The staff spent a complete day pondering by way of the principles of how the boys can be offered within the advertisements, from sizing to look to mechanics and past.
“We needed it to really feel as relatable as doable, to not make them characters or caricatures of themselves,” Apaliski stated. “Treating it with just a little bit extra of a cinematic lens added to the juxtaposition of what you have been seeing… Taking pictures in a really critical means really heightened the humor that got here with it.”
Other than the humor, the best way varied boys are offered within the advert — from hairless to groomed to completely unruly — speaks to the model’s values.
“We’re very cautious to not dictate a mode,” Kertész stated. “In the event you take a look at that wedding ceremony scene, that spells that out visually, the place you have got each pair of boys in a unique fashion. It is a means for us to say ‘Sure, we encourage you to maintain down there… however have your individual fashion, have your individual persona, have your individual concept of what’s groomed for you.’”
To broaden the marketing campaign to extra shoppers, the trouble consists of an AR filter that provides customers their very own pair of boys: two mini variations of the consumer at hip peak, populated with varied grooming types. In a separate video, model ambassador Davidson tries out the filter.
“If these TV spots open up that dialog, the filter makes you assume twice about it,” Apaliski stated. “It felt like a pure extension of the core concept of the marketing campaign: one thing that might be entertaining, native to a few of these platforms and apps and extremely shareable.”
Whether or not within the advert, the AR filter or actual life, Manscaped desires its prospects to think about their boys and what grooming means to them.
“It is a reflection of your self,” Apaliski added, “and also you need that to be one of the best reflection.”
