Cut through or alienation. When strategy and creative execution don’t work together!

A really interesting risqué approach from Philips in promoting their new epilator product. In a category dominated by Gillette and its huge marketing budget, promoting the virtues of the “inner goddess in you” with its all American clean beauty positing, it’s genially nice to see a different tact. Philips as a brand has been positioning and reinforcing itself around a softly, softly, simplicity mantra for years now, the question is, is this departure towards male androgyny a step to far to quick.

In principle, I like the strategy behind this campaign. How do you compete with the likes of Gillette on a limited budget – the answer is cut through and this will surely achieve that! The campaign idea around men’s intolerance to pain, and in particular hair removal is a nice one. Surely if a man can put up with the pain of using an epilator it must not hurt too much; and to boot if it can help a guy remove body hair and look like a girl, it surely can do the same for a women. A simple, but powerful analogy!

So both the strategy and campaign idea seem right on target, but for me there is still a question around how the audience will react in terms of purchase intent. My guess is that the concept of ‘androgyny’ is a difficult, and almost unpalatable concept for women. Having worked in this category I know that women’s motivations for hair removal revolve (to a significant degree at least) around jealousy. They want (biologically need to) compete with other women. The thought that a man can be beautiful (which I reluctantly concede she/he does look good) must be a strange concept for women to process. What is the implication for the brand in such a scenario? Will women identify or be repelled?

For me this ad has a really powerful strategy behind it which will lead to creating cut through and ad recall. However, for me the creative execution lends itself to alienating its female audience and ultimately leaving Gillette very much in control of this category. Although the advertiser in me applauds DDB and the client for its boldness, perhaps it is just too much to quick for such a clean and beautifully simply brand?

What are your thoughts about female motivations around the beauty category? Do you think this approach will work?