“Who said beautiful, soft, flawless skin is just for women?”
After the success of our first Proven ad, they came back for more with one change: they wanted to target men this time around. Most skincare companies completely neglect men, despite the fact that men want to look good too.
The challenge was: How do we create something relatable for men, on a topic that is typically “only for women”?
The solution: By personifying something everybody has no matter what gender: insecurities.
My responsibilities as Creative Director:
Research: After our first ad with Proven did well, the CEO came back for round two. She shared something interesting: a sizable portion of their customers are actually men, despite all of their marketing being pretty women focused. She came with survey data from these men: their skin goals, insecurities, and needs honestly weren’t different from the women’s.
I interviewed two dozen random male customers and heard the same themes: guys feel confident when they look good. They can tell when somebody’s looking at a blemish on their face. They can tell, as they’re getting older, that their skin doesn’t feel the same as it used to. They have insecurities about these things, and tried Proven in order to solve them.
We decided to take a risk and do something skincare companies don’t typically do: we stopped ignoring that men want great skin too.
Writing: Most skincare companies ignore that men even exist. On the rare occurrence that they do address men, it’s incredibly hyper-masculine: imagine a bearded lumberjack chopping wood, chugging beer, and flexingg while holding up his favorite face cleanser. It wasn’t exactly relatable to the average guy. I took a different approach, and brought to life a common thread throughout the survey data and Zoom interviews. I turned that nagging voice of insecurity in their heads…into a real person.
Visuals: It was really important for this ad to live in a world that looked completely normal so that the existence of the Insecurity character stood out. We had to have four separate casting sessions to find the right person for that role, and I’m happy we did because he did an excellent job bringing this idea to life.
Post-production feedback: I gave detailed feedback to our editor to help ensure the cut reflected what was intended in the script.