eos Says No Occasion Is Too Small for Shaving Whatever You Like
It's a low bar on these delights, but that's the world now
Eos and the agency Mischief return with a new campaign, “Smoothness When You Need It Most.” It’s quick and dirty, gets its point across efficiently, and feels more like conventional advertising, peppered with the wry little eos tone of voice.
Here’s “Your Interview.” In the ad, a person’s shaving. Overlaid, a narrator explains the context: big job interview. “It’s the kind of job where you can print all your online shopping return labels for free.” Boy, have our standards changed.
“Now, go delete every questionable photo you’ve ever posted.”
Up next, “Your Fancy Dinner.” You know, at the kind of restaurant with two dollar signs, where you take your parents when they’re in town because you can’t afford it on your own. There’s also a bit about stealing tampons from the bathroom.
Next up, “Your Date”—with “sweet, sweet Keith, with those seven hairs above his lip.” He’s got sexy little water shoes. More importantly, his parents have a boat. (Not a bad thing to have access to in high summer.)
The last piece, “Shave Cream ASMR,” is just six seconds long and exactly what it sounds like: the satisfying scrape of razor against creamed furry flesh, coupled with the tagline.
As always, the objective here is to normalize shaving for everyone, anywhere on the body, for any occasion.
“Body hair may be universal, but the truth is that some moments are more worth shaving for than others,” say Dana Buckhorn and Tanner Thompson, creatives at Mischief, eos’ agency of record. “There’s no point baby seal-ifying any of those parts to sit at home in sweats. So we wanted to celebrate the moments that actually make the act of shaving worth it, the moments where being smooth actually does give you the little confidence boost you need—from head to hooha.”
The actors are fairly relatable, and while there are many reasons we don’t personally identify with them or these scenarios, the market looks more or less like Gen Z teetering over autonomous adulthood: Your parents are still paying for their own visits to a restaurant of your choice, and your dates are half-selected by their parents’ assets. (Of course, we could extend these inferences to anybody who’s gotten trapped in this stage of life because of the collapse of social mobility … but let’s be honest, nobody cares about millennials anymore, unless they’re mad about avocado toast.)
The work benefits from a creator/influencer push on social media, and out-of-home executions in New York and Chicago subways. Mischief last graced us with a pube-harvesting initiative for saving the world. (Far more interesting. Harder to close brisk sales on a digital billboard, though.)
“Smoothness When You Need It Most” will run through the summer months. We would call it serviceable.