In the 1960s, Dieter Rams made Braun a global design icon with beautifully simple consumer tech products that can still give you (if you’re me) goosebumps today. By 2015, however, the legendary brand’s U.S. presence had slipped to being the lesser known over-priced electric shaver at Walmart.
With P&G's big-time NFL partnership at their disposal and a lucky-break spokesman deal with Super Bowl champion quarterback Russell Wilson, the brand asked us to leverage a football-focused TV buy to make premium electric shavers matter to an increasingly bearded U.S. audience.
The insight was simple: Shaving isn't about looking good, it's about feeling that you're at your best. On the surface, that's not very Earth-shattering… But, for a brand that had rested on blunt tech benefits and chiseled German models for decades, it was a big step toward authenticity.
The director, Henry Lu, helped us bring this story of confidence to life through an interview I conducted with Russell about what facing greatness means to him. The authenticity of Russell's own words paired with the minimalistic soundtrack and documentary-style footage captures the heart of the Face Greatness campaign in a beautifully real way. While this video never went to market, I think it could have been a powerful branding tool as an online video extension of the TV spot.
My personal recut of the final TV spot focuses on one human moment: Looking at yourself in the mirror every morning. For some people, this moment is just routine, but for men like Russell Wilson, it's about visualizing the man you want to be. It's about facing greatness. And, most importantly, it happens with our product in your hand.
To bring this truth to life, I featured a soulful gospel track by Leon Bridges as the soundtrack to my edit. I love how the song's spiritual tone brings out the meaning in Russell's words. And while this cut never ran, I think it would have stood out in the sea of NFL machismo and struck an authentic chord with the U.S. audience. Plus, Russell loves this song (he was even listening to Leon in his trailer at the shoot).
To get the most out of a TV spot, every client will always want to post it on social. But we thought Braun could do better. By recutting all of the self-reflection moments from the TV spot into loop-friendly, text-forward social posts featuring real quotes from our Russell Wilson interview, we encouraged the brand to extend their 30-second TV spot to a more holistic campaign of ongoing engagement. Posted in sync with the Seahawks season, these posts had the potential to spread throughout Russell's fanbase and reproduce the success of the previous year's multimedia campaign. Unfortunately, they chose not to pursue the idea, but the opportunity was there for the taking.
ADDITIONAL CREDITS: Keith Haun (Art Direction), David Schlosser (Creative Direction)