When we saw this ad for Schick’s Quattro TrimStyle a few weeks ago it tickled our imagination, but it seemed to be living in an awkward place between outright campy and demurely suggestive. The combo blade and trimmer lets women shave and, in the ad’s words, ‘transform’. You can almost feel the creative struggle that must have occurred between agency (JWT, NY) and client over how far to take it.
The TV spot (below), though a little more suggestive since the topiaries transform from untrimmed to trimmed, similarly lives in that neither-here-nor-there world.
Then we saw the video on AgencySpy’s Week in Advertising 22. This is where, it seems to us, the campaign should have gone. The video’s fab lyrics encourage women to ‘mow the lawn’ declaring ‘some bushes are really big, some gardens are mighty small, but whatever shape your topiary, it’s easy to trim them all’. The viz’s are equally campy and suggestive.
At first we thought it was the British version because of the URL, but according to scaryideas, it was produced by JWT, NY. Of course, it doesn’t exist anywhere on the company’s generic-looking Quattro For Women website.
The fun direction must have freaked the hell out of the focus group ladies in Minneapolis, so mainstream media got the soft stuff.
Here’s the TV ad:
Text would go here relating to the offer