The following ad is for Old Spice (it’s what real men used to splash on their face before the likes of Calvin Klein and Paul Smith made us all smell like summer meadows). Made by Wieden & Kennedy Portland, the ad was shot in one take and uses humour to great effect to get the audience’s attention.

The takeaway point:

This ad isn’t aimed directly at who you’d assume to be the typical target audience for male grooming products – men. Instead it focuses attention on addressing a female audience. There’s a level of aspiration in the tone (the man your man could be), but more importantly the ad is speaking directly to the people who spend the most money on male grooming – women!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1266206/How-women-massive-surge-sales-male-grooming-products.html

The humour in the ad and the fact that it was launched during the SuperBowl ensured that the ad also appealed to men — taking a familiar product and giving it a modern twist.

With any campaign we need to really look at the target audience we go after — is there someone other than the obvious choice we should be speaking to? Can we take a different approach by speaking to someone in another part of the business who can influence our desired end-audience? What are their pressures / problems? What do they find funny? What do they do outside of the office?

It’s a starter for 10, but have a think.