Dating app Tinder and hair removal brand Gillette have teamed up on a campaign, which might cause us to see a few more clean-shaven faces around.
In a video for the campaign, Tinder talks to random college girls to find out what kind of male face they’re more attracted to, according to which way they swipe, because “In this swipe or die world, your face is all you’ve got”.
The ad then goes on to show how Tinder found that after getting “girls, talking about guys, behind their backs” they didn’t have much of a penchant for facial hair, after which it claims it got Gillette on board to test out this theory.
Of course, in reality it was Gillette that paid the popular dating app to test its self-serving theory, and together they did a series of swipe tests with over 100,000 men – analysing their faces, their matches and left vs. right swipes.
And surprise, surprise, they found the beardy men were shown less love. Tinder and Gillette say they found 74 percent of “right swipers” went to guys who kept their facial hair in check.
According to DDBlip, which has a planner rank campaigns, this scored 5/5.
This case hits all the marks for a brilliant use of social media. Gillette’s collaboration with Tinder not only made creative use of Tinder’s unique platform, but went further to answer a longstanding question that actually gives value to consumers’ lives beyond the brand. And the best part, Gillette successfully gave men a real reason to shave.
With the massive proliferation of facial hair among men worldwide (see model Ben Dahlhaus), blogs all over the internet brimming with good-looking bearded men, and even well-groomed businessmen shaving weekly instead of daily, it’ll be interesting to see how successful this campaign will be.
Tinder and Gillette also steered away from traditional advertising, opting to put the video on YouTube and push the campaign through a website called shavetest.com, which outlines Gillette’s results and includes many pictures of bearded vs. unbearded men and a whole lot of cringe-worthy slogans such as “she loves your stubble as much as you love hers” and “Take it all off, maybe she will too”.
The beards should stay, I say!
