Art Direction, Cole Keeton    
Creative Direction, Strategy Andrew Allen   
Referenced Artwork, Kehinde Wiley


The concept for this campaign was born out of a seemingly unrelated insight that was found in the New York Times. This paved the way for creating a rally cry behind one of the most universally hated things in our culture. The teen mustache. The"Teen Mustache" concept was based all around the right of passage that every young man goes through. We pitched this to Gillette as a campaign based around the idea of a brand using the form of freedom, choice and most importantly acceptance of their young audiences newly sprouted follicles. Gillette would be poised as a brand to lead by example, in that a giant razor blade manufacturer could also be seen as an accepting father figure or big brother their audience never had. Assuring them to shave when THEY WERE READY. And only after they brush the haters off and decide it's time to make that first trim. 
Gillette will be there.

We also wanted to have a symbol. A device that would give a loud public shout out to the young men who have taken the time to send us a picture of their first stash and the date it made its grand entrance.  Heres to you Calvin in Malibu.
Also applied was pressure to unicode to adopt a teen mustache emoji that our crew could identify with and use to express their stache pride. 
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