Ad of the Day: Gillette Venus enlists a singing pube to banish bathroom blushes
Gillette Venus is refusing to beat around the bush when it comes to discussing personal grooming in a humorous ode to the humble pubic hair, the blight of soap dishes up and down the land.
Venus wants to smooth out our relationship with our pubic hair
Celebrating the curly stragglers as something to be proud of, the idiosyncratic messaging depicts a variety of brown, blonde and ginger short and curlies joining together in unison to sing the praises of body hair.
The attention-grabbing animation seeks to reclaim the word pube for polite society by banishing euphemisms, enabling people to overcome embarrassment around a taboo topic.
The Pube Song has been illustrated by Sacha Beeley and follows one headstrong pube wishing to speak up for the community by singing: “There’s nothing diabolical about this little follicle.”
There is good reason behind Gillette’s ad, with its messaging honed from a recent survey of 250 women, which found a majority were too ashamed to utter the term ‘pubic’ in public, preferring to employ euphemisms instead when referring to their nether regions.
Explaining how this gave rise to a singing cartoon pube, Kristin Monaco, senior product research engineer for Venus, said: “We’ve found that more women are dissatisfied with caring for the pubic area than anywhere else on the body – in fact, 56 percent of US women wish there were more accurate descriptions and imagery in society of women grooming their pubic area. That’s why the new Pubic Hair & Skin Collection is focused solely on this area and contains four pubic-focused products: a smoothing exfoliant, a shaving gel, a razor, and a soothing serum.
“‘The Pube Song’ wants to normalize doing whatever you want with your pubic hair by singing, ‘Why the mass hysteria about the pubic area, there's nothing diabolical about this little follicle. So take care of us, your pubic hair, if you trim, or you shave, or you’re bare down there, whichever way’s your way, it’s all OK.’”
The campaign dovetails with concerted efforts to normalize everyday beauty in advertising by shedding unrealistic portrayals of beauty, which can foster feelings of inadequateness.
This includes a campaign by Mother London that invited women to display their pubic areas in support of the feminist movement Project Bush.
You can watch ‘The Pube Song’ in full above. To get in touch about Ad of the Day, please email imogen.watson@thedrum.com.
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