Bigfoot's Haircare Secret? It's e.l.f.!

He vogues for the camera these days

Bigfoot as a glamorous model, busting catwalk moves? Dude works it (and even twerks it) in Tombras’ very amusing spot introducing e.l.f.’s haircare line.

But he don’t need no stinkin’ runway! The forest floor’s just fine for Sasquatch, as portrayed by Robert Strange, who gives it all he’s got after sampling some product on the trail:

We get nice co-star turns by Peyton List and Yonna Jay, while Ulf Johansson’s unfussy direction lets the silliness shine. (Just like those wild locks!) Using a snippet of “Also Sprach Zarathustra” on the soundtrack was a neat touch, too. IYKYK

Here, Avi Baglia, CCO at Tombras N.Y., and brand CCO Ashley Rosebrook chat with Muse about campaign development:

Why Bigfoot? What put him in your mind?

Avi Baglia: The idea stemmed from the insight that when you have incredible hair you want to show it off, to an almost irrational degree. Bigfoot has always shied away from the camera. But when he gets beautiful e.l.f. hair, he has a massive change of personality and decides. The mythical creature that avoided cameras now actively seeks them.

Ashley Rosenbrook: We love making the absurd make perfect sense. Hair is a super emotional category—good hair is confidence. And when you’re having a bad hair day, you just want to hide where no one can see you. There’s no better way to illustrate the power of great hair than Bigfoot coming out of hiding for the first time in history to show off his sleek blowout.

What’s the not-so-mythical brand takeaway for viewers?

Avi Baglia: The biggest message is that e.l.f. now does hair. The eyes, lips and face brand now offers haircare. This was highly anticipated news that we wanted to deliver with surprise and humor.

Is that a custom creature suit?

Avi Baglia: We took an existing movie costume for Bigfoot and then rebuilt it with beautiful, flowing e.l.f. hair. The actor playing Bigfoot featured in Lord of the Rings and Doctor Who among other movies.

He’s worked a lot in weird gear and prosthetics, yes?

Avi Baglie: Having someone with that professional experience was a huge plus. Also, the suit was enormous, standing nearly 7 feet tall. And Robert is a really tall man who was used to playing massive creatures before. He really took to the role. And there were a lot of fun improv movements. Especially the dance moves.

Any anecdotes from the set?

Ashley Rosebrook: We needed Bigfoot’s hair to be super glam for the hair flips, so we gave him what our community calls a “40 inch buss-down.” Keeping all that hair blown out on a humid, rainy set was an adventure in and of itself. It was important to make sure his facial prosthetics would allow him to express the emotions he felt as he discovered his hair could be frizz-free for the first time in his existence.

Avi Baglia: We shot the spot in the forests of England. And the day of the shoot it started raining really heavily, which as you can imagine was bad news for Bigfoot’s flowing hair. Luckily, one of the e.l.f. clients was well versed in a rain ritual. And incredibly, right after she did it, it stopped raining for the rest of the day.