Brands Briefing: Manscaped uses the Super Bowl to usher in a new brand platform

The ad, entitled “Hair Ballad,” zooms in on anthropomorphized clumps of hair singing after being shaven off their owner. “I was your scruff, your loyal friend,” croons one such ball of hair. 

It’s a fitting ad for a brand that has sought to infuse its category with humor. But the ad is also meant to kick off Manscaped’s new brand platform, called “Mancare Your Everywhere,” which will inform the company’s marketing for the rest of the year. Manscaped finds itself at a similar inflection point as many brands that started out as predominantly direct-to-consumer brands — through its advertising, it is now tasked to both reach people who have still never heard of the brand and reintroduce itself to old or existing customers who may not be aware of all of the products it now carries. 

“Although we did a pretty good job in getting a lot of brand awareness in the initial years of the brand, there are still a lot of people who will be introduced to Manscaped for the first time,” said the company’s chief marketing officer, Marcelo Kertesz. As of Monday, Manscaped’s website traffic was up 179% after running the Super Bowl ad compared to its baseline. 

As Manscaped worked with its creative agency, Quality Meats, to develop the ad, Kertesz said that he initially gave his team a very simple brief: Manscaped needed to move from “ball” to “all.” 

“We need to tell people that [groin trimmers] were the beginning of the journey [but] now we have all these products,” Kertesz said. 

Manscaped had wanted to run a Super Bowl ad for a few years, Kertesz said. But Manscaped had to first enter more retailers to justify such a pricey commercial. “Everyone can now find our products,” Kertesz said. “Having a larger footprint and distribution makes it way more reasonable to put such a massive message out there.”

Since the Super Bowl ad is designed to kick off a new brand campaign, Manscaped has also been focused on finding ways to incorporate that creative and messaging into its marketing campaigns and digital presence for the rest of the year. 

Developing a Super Bowl ad “is way more than just those 30 seconds,” Kertesz said. “It starts before and, you know creating teasers and creating buzz around the creative and all the activations – that comes before the game event starts.” 

As just one example, Manscaped has incorporated shots of what Kertesz calls “those little adorable monster hairballs” into the creative on its Amazon landing page. Its tagline “Mancare Your Everwhere” is now prominently displayed on its homepage. And Manscaped has some content that it has developed with a comedian that it will be launching soon, that ties into the ethos of the Super Bowl Commercial. 

David Teicher, founder and CEO of Qru Media Advisory and Ventures said that Manscaped’s Super Bowl ad stood out to him because “For something like the Super Bowl which is the biggest audience you can think of – it was really interesting to me because they had to reach multiple audiences with this new story.” 

“Their ad was very funny and true to their roots,” he added. 

Teicher added that as more digitally-native brands like Manscaped enter more physical stores, it can be an adjustment learning how to successfully market on store shelves, where they might be competing with dozens of similar brands. 

“You are used to operating in a space where once you can get people to your own website or to your own property, there’s no competition there – now all of a sudden they have to exist in a much more crowded environment.”

“So the idea of investing more into awareness ahead of time so that consumers are already aware of your brand, familiar with your brand, what you do, what you sell – it makes it that much easier for them,” he said. 

Kartesz said that to track the effectiveness of the Super Bowl ad, Manscaped will be looking at lifts in social listening and search volume in the first 72 hours after the ad runs. Manscaped will also be looking at brand lift; the company has a campaign that it runs every quarter looking at how it indexes on each part of a customer’s grooming routine.

“As you might imagine, we completely overindex when it’s groin grooming – we are the top brand in that space in terms of having trust and authority from consumers, but we want to bring that same authority to other parts of the body,” Kartesz said. – Anna Hensel

Goodpop’s Valentine’s Day play

It’s not just flower and jewelry brands leaning into romantic gestures to draw engagement. Food brands like ice pop brand Goodpop are also getting creative with their Valentine’s Day promotional stunts. The brand is running a limited-edition ice pop giveaway, inspired by a Craigslist Missed Connection post about a meet-cute in the frozen aisle of an Austin Whole Foods.

Kristi Kleila, VP of marketing, said that this year the company specifically budgeted to take advantage of these real-time marketing opportunities. So, when a Goodpops employee spotted the missed connections alert, Kleila said it was the perfect time to try a promotional stunt under a time crunch. “We got our founder involved because he’s always willing to try whatever we want to do,” Kleila said.

The company quickly put together a limited-edition frozen ring-shaped pop, inspired by missed connections. Goodpop produced 50 of the limited-edition rings to give away. Some of these will be given to fans and followers who submit their own meet-cute story through a dedicated portal on Goodpop’s website, while others were given to influencers to promote the campaign. As of this writing, the brand has received 2,209 love story submissions from customers. 

“With this missed connection, we’re hoping we can rally our social community and do something really nice for these two people and get them together somehow,” Kleila said. –Gabriela Barkho

What we’re reading

• Once Upon a Farm finally made its public market debut on Friday, with shares rising 17% that day. 
• Weeks after its stores began closing and liquidating their inventory, women’s apparel and accessories chain Francesca’s filed for bankruptcy. 
• Trubar has sold for $173 million amid a protein bar boom.

What we’ve covered

• TikTok’s rocky U.S. transition gives brands pause after outage hits sales. 
• How brands like Gisou and Emi Jay are embracing blind boxes.
• The Super Bowl pop-up playbook: How While on Earth, Béis and Abercrombie & Fitch showed up on the ground in San Francisco.