Hair's a new
one: Backvertising
Agency sends a hairy man out to wander about a beach
By Toni Fitzgerald
Aug 20, 2009
It may have been the oddest casting call in advertising history, or at least the history of British Columbia, where the stunt took place.
Wanted: A man with a hairy back, the hairier the better. Must be willing to prance around the beach in minimal clothing and pose for pictures with passersby.
The call, or one just like it, was sent out by Rethink Communications, a Vancouver agency, on behalf of its client, Parissa wax strips.
The idea: Turn the man’s back into a billboard, creating the wording of the message by removing patches of hair using--what else?--Parissa wax strips.
Rethink dubbed it backvertising.
“It wasn’t just getting someone who was willing to do it. We had to get someone hairy enough to see the letters on his back,” says Katie Ainsworth, associate creative director at the agency. “We got 30 to 40 responses [to the casting call]. People like attention, even weird attention.”
Then once the very hairy guy was found, there was the matter of waxing his back without botching the job.
The agency worked with a makeup artist to get the right look. Two rectangular patches were waxed off of his back. The remaining hair was arranged to read “parissa” on top and “wax strips” on the bottom, all in lowercase letters.
Most of it really was done via waxing, though Ainsworth says some hair had to be reattached with glue in order to create legible letters.
“We wanted it as true as possible,” she says.
The man was then dressed in a Speedo-style black bathing suit and sandals and sent out to Kits Beach in Vancouver. He wandered the beach on Saturday, July 25, talking to passersby, handing out free Parissa samples, and even demonstrating how to use them.
The agency posted a video filmed that day on YouTube, but it received a lot of unexpected publicity via other social media sites. People who took pictures with the backvertiser shared them on their Facebook pages or Twitter accounts.
“We got this whole other line of press we didn’t anticipate,” Ainsworth says.
As for how the agency came up with the campaign, it didn’t take a lot of brainstorming.
“The client just wanted to do something in the summer, obviously during waxing season, that would generate buzz in a high-traffic area,” Ainsworth says. “With male grooming sort of on the rise, we all thought it was funny.”
The campaign worked at the most basic level by tying the product very directly to the message.
But what really pulled it all together was the laugh factor. Folks thought the campaign was hilarious.
“Hairy guys are funny,” Ainsworth says.
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