November is Men’s Health Awareness Month, peaking on 19 November with International Man’s Day. And it is a month where a male attribute—the moustache—takes pride of place as a way to support men with prostate cancer, through the #Movember movement. But if we look back a few years in the life of some men, to their teenage years, we will discover that this same attribute, their moustache, can be a real cause of complex for many teenagers starting to grow what is known as a ‘fuzztache’ or ‘bumfluff’, amongst other things.
This is the insight being used by Gillette, in collaboration with Proximity Spain, in their new campaign, entitled ‘A Moustache | My Moustache’ with the claim ‘It takes a real man to start being you’.
Gillette has brought this campaign back to revindicate inclusive masculinity, focusing now on a key moment—puberty—a stage that sees the beginnings of the man that each boy will be in the future.
The men’s shaving brand aims to encourage young men to start being themselves and for nobody, not even a brand like Gillette, to tell them what they should do with their physical appearance.
“As a brand, we feel it is important to transmit constructive, positive values, starting with the youngest among us. ‘It takes a real man’ is our effort to prevent men feeling pressurised by stereotypes of any kind, so that they can feel comfortable enough to make their own choices at all times in order to become the best version of themselves,” comments Santiago Antolin, Gillette Brand Manager Iberia.
The campaign
The campaign revolves around a fun ad featuring some boys using a song as an anthem to make themselves gradually feel better about their first ‘peach fuzz’. The author of this popular song, called ‘Moustache’, is Stephen Collins Foster, the composer of the classic ‘Oh, Susana’, amongst other songs. His lyrics aim to empower teenagers who notice the beginnings of their first moustache, talking about how good it is to have a good moustache.
The ad will be on TV on 18 November, during the Spanish team’s qualifier for the UEFA Euro 2020 final tournament. And it will be seen on TV and on different digital media over coming weeks.
According to Susana Pérez, Executive Creative Director at Proximity Spain, “Puberty sees the beginnings of masculinity and that is where we have found an insight never before addressed in advertising: peach fuzz, a visible symbol of a whole series of changes that come with puberty and can create a complex for young men. A brave campaign by Gillette that tells these youths: ‘that nobody should tell you when to start shaving, not even us’.”
The campaign also includes a 60” digital ad that will be hosted on the hayquesermuyhombre.es website, in addition to a brand day on YouTube coinciding with International Man’s Day, and a display campaign.
Anyone who wishes to join the conversation can do so using the campaign hashtags #MyFirstMoustache and #ItTakesARealMan.
The campaign also has the collaboration of the celebrities who participated in the previous Gillette #ItTakesARealMan campaign: Paco León, Dani Martín, David Silva, Jesús Vidal, Pau Ribes and Rubén Errebeene. They will all post content relating to the campaign on their social media profiles to encourage young men to start being themselves.
Gillette Talks
Gillette has focussed its new campaign on the territory of teenagers, where it is running a participative debates programme (Gillette Talks, the culmination of the previous ‘It Takes A Real Man’ campaign) in primary and secondary schools with boys aged 14 to 16 and the collaboration of 20,000 students around Spain, in order to help young men to accept themselves as they are and break through any barrier preventing them from being themselves.
