Extreme Comfort Shaving
Issue 11 | July 2009
Agency
DraftFCB London
Creative Team
Executive Creative Director: Mark Fiddes, Digital Creative Director: Alix Pennycuick, Copywriters:Haydn Kerr, Matt Lee, Art Directors: Richie Wykes, Brian Riley, Shaban Siddiq
Production Team
Production manager: Maryann Melchior, Digital producer: Stephen Rousset
Other Credits
Managing Partner: Louise Whitcomb, Account Director: Sarah Ashworth
Date
2nd March 2009
Background
NIVEA is an established skincare brand which wanted to break into the male shaving market. Agency research came up with an interesting statistic. 38% of adults admit to having secret, pleasure addictions.
In fact, not a day passes in which the media does not report on addictions of one sort or another. This insight led to a strategy which the agency defined as “Create a pleasure underworld.”
Idea
This new campaign is unusual in that the offline broadcast media puts the idea out there, so our target can find it. Then online media targets them ‘where to play’.
Three videos have been produced to arouse interest in cueballnetwork.com and foambeardlady.com. The sites that these films link to continue the game show and fetish themes but both link to the Stepping Stones Retreat (steppingstonesretreat.com) for compulsive shavers. Dr Bareman of the Stepping Stones Retreat Centre takes users through some psychometric tests ending with a free sample of Extreme Comfort Shaving Gel, provided by NIVEA.
The idea was intended deliberately to subvert the traditional shaving advertisements with pretty girls and hunky men and delve into the psychological implications of compulsive shaving fetishes.
Results
To date the web ring has had over 358,584 hits and climbing (after only 6 weeks) using only natural contagion and continues to appeal. The success of the campaign is informing the development of all future advertising for the brand since NIVEA FOR MEN is now the No.2 Shaving Brand in the UK and the fastest performing brand in the shaving category.
Our Thoughts
NIVEA has been behind some of the dullest advertising in Britain. Then this campaign comes along. It feels as if a planner has done a lot of background work and then been very persuasive with his/her client to make what is essentially shaving porn seem logical and appropriate.
There has been a lot of advertising urging us to “drink responsibly”. The idea here is to shave responsibly – and it’s just very good fun. The idea of interlinking a number of sites together in a webring is also intriguing. I wouldn’t follow the links, but hundreds of thousands of others would – and did.
Full marks to a client who dared to experiment and, hopefully, is now reaping the rewards.