Looking Good, Looking Sharp
The best ad of the year won't win at Cannes, but might win in Germany
It’s festival season, so I wanted to write about the work I think is really great.
It’s not a new observation that awards are generally crap and self-indulgent (unless you win one, obviously) and the best work our industry produces generally goes unawarded, under-appreciated, and tends to make people a bit embarassed.
(more thoughts here and here on this)
My prediction is that the best campaign of the year will fall into this exact trap, but I think it’s brilliant, for a few reasons:
The Gillette brief is a seriously difficult one.
Facial hair has been de rigeur for blokes for the last 15 years or so, and an era of leisurewear and working-from-home means there are fewer and fewer occasions when traditional ‘smartness’ is required.
D2C challengers in the category have sprung up left, right and centre, becoming massive players and big ad spenders.
Product evolution is nearing its limits - how many more blades does a face need? Product superiority is far less tangible than it used to be.
As a result the brand has gone to some weird places in the last few years. It must have taken lots of work to get it back on track.
It’s properly distinctive
The target audience for this is a broad-based group of men, an audience shared with beer brands, bookies and the ilk, and so targeted by a relentless parade of funny, boorish, sport-themed identikit ads.
In this context, a sincere message really stands out. It’s verging on saccharine, but I think it just about avoids it, and the insight that grooming makes you stand a bit taller, and standing in front of a mirror forces you to think about the person looking back at you, remains valid.
It understands the power of consistency
The song is an update of the original version from 1989. It was catchy then too, so builds on existing memory structures, which I think probably serves as a latent frequency boost, making the campaign feel bigger more quickly.
The strapline has been around forever, and so does the same thing.
The ad shows up consistently in the same places. Anyone who’s watched any Premier League football in the last few months can’t have failed to see it. I expect it will be a staple of Euro 2024 ad breaks too.
The song absolutely slaps
I really want to dislike the song, but it’s great isn’t it? I think they’ve missed a bit of an opportunity not releasing it for download or streaming as I fancy it could chart. It’s a real earworm, and is gaining loads of earned media traction.
I. mean. look. at. all. these.
I predict that by the end of Euro 2024 there’ll be clips of people singing it in the pub or the street somewhere.
Love to know what you think, and what other great work you think will go tragically overlooked.
Greg