I was changing my background when I found this cracker

 

I think that the definition being a collection of cows is hilarious, however useful it may turn out no to be, it makes me laugh.

Foam vs Gel vs Cream

Interesting exerts from (http://wingtip.com/shave-cream-vs-gel-vs-foam)

 

For those who like to grind their own coffee beans, press their own shirts, and shine their own shoes -- shaving soap is probably the best bet, as you get to work-up your own lather every morning with a soap.

Accordingly, for those who prefer picking-up their coffee from the local coffee shop, dropping their shirts off at the laundry, and well, you get the picture -- a shaving cream would be a better option, as the cream comes whipped straight out of its container. 

Research into shaving foam and gel.

Q: Should you use shaving foam, gel or cream?

MH’s Online Grooming Editor answers your grooming questions

(http://www.menshealth.co.uk/style/grooming/should-you-use-shaving-foam-gel-or-cream)

Our Online Grooming Editor Lee Kynaston is on hand to answer all of your grooming queries. If you would like to ask Lee a question, email grooming@menshealth.co.uk.

Q. What’s better – shaving foam, gel or cream?

A. Choosing a shaving lube is a bit like picking a football team – sometimes you choose it, sometimes it chooses you. More often than not, though, it’s down to what the lady of the household happens to throw into her shopping basket.
So which is best? Well, each of the main shaving variants (foam, gel and cream) has the function: to prevent stubble from drying out and easing the shaving process by providing a cushion between your skin and the razor. And in truthfulness, it’s as much down to personal choice as anything.
What I would say, however, is that foams – whilst cheap, convenient and easy to use – tend to dry the skin more than the other two. Hence, they’re not so great if you already have dry or sensitive skin. Gels usually offer more lubrication, and transparent ones are useful if you have facial hair and need to see where you’re going with the razor.
My own personal favourite (and that of many of the experts I’ve talked to over the years) is shaving cream. Often, they provide the richest and most lubricating ‘cushion’ for the skin. Many are glycerine-based to reduce the chances of the cream drying your skin out, and their moisturising properties make them especially good if you have particularly tough stubble to contend with.
Most creams lather up a treat in your hand but if you really want to get the most out of them I’d suggest applying them with a shaving brush. Not only will you get better results (a brush will ensure all your stubble is covered and lifted from the skin, making it easier to cut), it will also make the cream go further, saving on your grooming bills.

What to buy

Wilkinson Sword Hydro Deep Hydration Shave Cream, £3.99 for 200ml from boots.com
Super-moisturising shave cream that’s formulated, like the whole Hydro range, to boost skin hydration during your shave.
Clinique M Shave Aloe Gel, £12 for 125ml from mankind.co.uk
This award-winning gel is one of the stars of Clinique’s men’s range. Its aloe ingredient calms razor burn and its excellent lubricating qualities ensure optimum razor-glide.
men-u Barbiere Shaving Brush and Stand, £8.95 from mankind.co.uk
Great value bristle shaving brush that comes complete with its own stand to ensure proper drainage of excess water.

Did you know?

Shaving brushes exfoliate skin in the same as scrubs, removing dead skin cells and helping prevent ingrown hairs.

Words by MH Online Grooming Editor Lee Kynaston

Moustaches

 

Thinking about moustache's and famous ones and all that kind of thing. They're everywhere at the moment, they're getting on my nerves. People who use shaving foam want to get rid of theirs, and I'm sure a lot of people want to get rid of this moustache trend. I could play on this?

Love this photo of Salvador Dali it's amazing.

 

 

YOUTUBE IS KING

Youtube is quite possibly the best place to look, an endless resource for researching into absolutely anything you could think of. The idea of shaving foam is to rid yourself of your facial hair yes? So why not look at videos of men who love their facial hair. I'm trying to think of all different angles here and this guy is just entirely entertaining, since finding this video I've started following him on instagram... his other videos are seriously entertaining. I've also really started to think about how mustaches are incredibly 'pop culture' at the moment if that makes sense? They're absolutely everywhere... hang on let me geta  few examples.

Ok, I think I need to stop there, its easy to say that after a quick search for 'mustache products' on Google, this is what I found. I cannot even believe some of these things exist. I feel for humanity.

This is also a bludy amazing find, with 768,391 views, a lot of people seem to know about this video. It's quite a catchy tune I won't lie, it makes me think of the vintage way and classic way of people shaving, and how much effort used to go into it. It also makes me think of the texture of shaving cream, and all those kind of things. The more I think the better the ideas.

Research into Nivea Skincare

Searching your product into youtube is a good way to start, especially if it's skincare. There's more beauty channels on youtube than there is of anything else. I found this guys video and it's obvious that quite a few men (or women buying for their partners) do obviously research into these kinds of things and watch these videos (30,134 views). The guy gives a pretty standard review of the skin care range giving his opinion on the products and how often he uses them. If he didn't say ummm so many times, I would have watched it with a lot more concentration. 

REVIEWS ON WWW.BOOTS.COM

My husband is really pleased with this product

Boots home delivery service was efficient and fast. Product met my husbands expectations

4* on product and value.

Excellent moisturiser

Bought this for my boyfriend to try and he really liked it. Moisturises well, isn't sticky, feels light and looks good. An all round good moisturiser.

5* Quality 4* Value

Quality moisturiser for men

I really like Nivea men products and this is no different. My skin is quite sensitive and some moisturisers give me spots, but this moisturiser leaves my skin looking great. It's a pretty light moisturiser so is easily absorbed. It's not really thick enough for me in the winter as my skin gets dryer, but for spring and summer it's the only face moisturiser I'll use.

Extra information:

from Leeds, UK

Age:25-34

Gender:Male

Owned Product for:1-3 months

Uses Product:Every day

Good product but too pricey

I really liked using this product as it absorbed it to my skin easily giving my face a glowing complexion however it's not a premium product & it's price should reflect this. Personally I think you pay the extra for the quirky packaging sadly.

Extra Information:

from Gateshead

Age:25-34

Gender:Male

Owned Product for:6-9 months

Uses Product:Every day

 

Nivea for Men Revitalising Moisturiser Q10

This is the most effective moisturiser I have used. Not the cheapest but certainly not the most expensive. At times difficult to find on the shelf at many outlets but the opportunity to order on-line from Boots is effective and efficient.

Nivea For Men Q10 Revitalise Creme 50ml

It is hard to fault the nivea for men range. Doesn't make your skin oily and makes a visible difference.

A high quality moisturiser.

A fantastic moisturiser, as expected with such a price tag it feels extremely light on the face, not at all greasy and puts feeling back into tired skin while dealing with dryness.

Expensive but well worth it.

This has shown me that, yes women buy it for their partners, but surprisingly men are actually buying this product for themselves, and are enjoying using it. The extra information that some people gave on their review is also especially helpful, showing me the types of men that are buying my product, both being within my age range (25-34). It also gives me a general idea on what people are thinking about the product and how successful it is, with the male from Gateshead buying it for 6-9 months.

My product reviews.

http://www.boots.com/en/Nivea-For-Men-Sensitive-Shaving-Foam_2601/

Favourite shaving foam!

After trying this when it was offer I can now say this is my favourite brand of shaving foam! The smell is nice, the foam is really foamy and thick, no everything you would want from a shaving foam! I have sensitive skin and have noticed a significant reduction in irritation when shaving! Will not be changing back to any other shaving foam anytime soon

Advantages: close shave, great on sensitive skin no irritation

Extra Information:

Age:18-24

Gender:Male

 

Chosen Product.

NIVEA MEN'S SENSITIVE SHAVING FOAM

INFORMATION:

Extra gentle, subtle fragrance, formula with Chamomile and Vitamin E specially developed for easily irritated and sensitive skin. Protects easily irritated skin while shaving.

Advanced shaving with Ultra Glide Technology provides

• Effective razor glide 
• Close and extra gentle shave 
• Helps protect against cuts and irritations

DIRECTIONS FOR USE:

• • Shake well before use / keep can upright
  • Massage directly on wet face 
  • For best results use with NIVEA FOR MEN® Sensitive Post Shave Balm.
    
    
     INGREDIENTS: 

• Aqua, TEA-Stearate, Isobutane, Laureth-23, Glycerin, Gossypium, Persea Gratissima Oil, Glycine Soja, Bisabolol, Chamomilla Recutita Flower Extract, PEG-12 Dimethicone, Stearyl Alcohol, Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose, PEG-7 M, Propane, Butane, Methylparaben, Propylparaben, Parfum
  
  
  £2.99 per 200ML
  
   

 Taken from (http://www.nivea.co.uk/products/mens-care/sensitive/Sensitive-Shaving-Foam)

Finalising the Target Audience

I have discovered that the audience I should be aiming my product at, will be men aged 20-40 who are working class. I can see this from the evidence I have found within the adverts storyline (mise en scene showing working class men, builder type jobs, football matches). They're just you're general type of man who can be aimed at by maybe using a humorous approach, and poking fun at themselves.

TARGET - WORKING CLASS MALES AGED 20-40

Male Target Audience

 Look beyond dated stereotypes to engage Men
Advertising to Men used to be as simple as buying media during the big game. Even though sporting events still attract large audiences, Men’s interests have broadened. They’re more involved with the family, visiting parenting websites and researching products for the household. Men go online to stay connected with friends and keep current with news. They’re spending less time with traditional broadcast media, and more time gaming, watching online videos, and consuming content through their mobile devices.

There are nearly 110 million Men online.¹ This deeply fragmented audience requires an advertising partner who can help you land your message across any digital screen.

More about Men:

• Men research products online, call friends and check reviews on their smartphones when in-store.²
  
• 50 percent of Men are influenced by digital ads and 44 percent are influenced by online search results.³
  
• Men go online to research traditionally male categories such as auto and tech, but they also do significant research in more traditionally female categories like health/wellness and food/cooking.²
  
• In the Dads sub-segment, 70 percent say they are the parent who does the grocery shopping and makes the household purchase decisions.³
  
• 59 percent of Dads say they use 4 or more sources of information to help them make purchase decisions, compared with 44 percent of Moms.⁴
  

Choose a strong partner

If you’re looking to target Men, Microsoft Advertising can help you identify the right audience within the general Men target, develop a strong set of messages and experiences, and engage them where they go. Microsoft Advertising gives you broad reach across screens to connect with Men throughout the consumer journey, from awareness to action.

• Xbox and Xbox LIVE – Everyone games. More than 4 out of 5 male adults ages 18 to 29 said they played video games, while 23 percent of respondents 65+ said the same.⁵ Reach more Men than ever with innovative experiences from Xbox and Xbox LIVE .
• FOXSports – One of the most trusted names in sports attracts a large and valuable audience with content and personalities visitors can’t find anywhere else. Rich ad opportunities and sponsorships give you a broad canvas for your story.
• Microsoft Media Network – In the U.S., reach 85.5 million male internet users through Microsoft brands such as MSN and Windows Live, plus hundreds of other top-ranked commercial sites.
• Skype – Nearly 4 out of 10 Young Dads and Pre-Family Men communicate with others on their game systems or through internet video calling. Of this audience, 72 percent use Skype as their primary internet video calling service.³
  
• Targeting Solutions – From Remessaging to Behavioral, Profile, Category and Custom targeting, our targeting solutions can help connect you with the right audience for your marketing goals.
  
  Challenge
  
  
  The old stereotypes of men being lazy or uninvolved with kids and household chores are dated. Today men are interested in categories like health and wellness, cooking and shopping—and it turns out they consider product reviews and friends’ opinions when making buying decisions. They are also less brand loyal than women and less responsive to advertising messages. So how can advertisers effectively target this valuable audience?
  
  
  Solution
  
  
  This study highlights current habits among men, particularly pre-family men and young dads, and proves that it’s time to deliver a new message.
  
  
  Results
  
  
  Advertisers shouldn’t just consider women when targeting shoppers—men are quickly catching up. The study revealed some fascinating trends among pre-family men and young dads:
  
  
• They’re gamers—and they also use their consoles to stream movies and other content.
• They give advice to family and friends—especially about tech and home products.
• They’re mobile—many travel and a vast majority communicate primarily via their mobile phone.

PRODUCT COMPARISON SITES, COMPANY
WEB SITES AND SEARCH ENGINES influence them the most, especially for tech, telco, auto, CPG and financial categories.

MSN is 54% more effective than competitive portals at improving online ad awareness and 81% more effective at improving message association.

• 
  
  (http://advertising.microsoft.com/ad-network/audience/men)
  
  
  What all this tells me... I need to be diverse with how I am reaching out to the male population, I need to think about the types of devices they're using every day, and how 'gadget savvy' they are. If I really want to appeal to my target audience of young dads and pre-family men (18-40) I need to obviously do a lot more research into how they live their lives and what kind of places they are at points in time. Which shops they go in, and how they enjoy spending their money. Also I need to decide which product I am going to be aiming at this audience.

Ambient Media

This was Russia's answer to an ambient media 'stunt' linked with the campaign. I absolutely love this idea, it's simple but so so effective. Russia took it into their hands to effectively use the 'stupidity' of the general public and warn them against Hunger Attacks. They took large rolls of snickers roll, which looks a heck of a lot like crime tape, and taped it around examples of 'idiocy' around Russia's city streets. As well as doing this, they also encouraged the general public to spot their ideas and examples they'd seen, creating a growing movement. This is a really simple but effective idea, poking fun at people's silly mistakes (who doesn't love doing that?) but it's targeted at everyone and gets the whole population involved not just the target audience. Getting the message more wide spread and in turn creating something really wonderful to look at.

Next up... Social Media

There was a lot of controversy surrounding some of this campaigns social media use. First I'll start with the less controversial Facebook page.

Found here Snickers Facebook page has started a really interesting 'competition' I suppose you could call it, which calls all to send in their 'Hungry face' for a chance to be on the snickers page. It's always good to get the millions of Facebook to join in. At the moment they have

5,307,660 likes · 76,676 talking about this

Which you can't really argue with, I've even joined them to deconstruct their campaign, so they're just adding their likes every single day. 

I also quite like the inclusion of women in this Facebook competition, even if there is a part of me that just thinks the people running the page are like 'What are you doing sending us these pictures, you're female, you're not accepted here.

The Facebook page has been keeping this trend alive for a few months, posting over Christmas...

Now on to the more controversial use of social media...

Twitter

Based solely in the UK with this little gem, Snickers made celebrities tweet 'out of character' to fit with the, making out of character decisions while hungry. Celebrities involved? Katie Price was made to tweet on the subject of macro economics, Ian Botham expressed his need to learn how to play the cello, Amir Kahn tweeted about
philately and Rio Ferdinand spoke of his new found love for knitting, An incredibly innovative idea, which produced some amazing tweets which can be seen below. The 26 tweets produced by these celebrities caused a MASSIVE stir which even ended up in the Uk advertising authorities getting involved, however the campagin was eventually cleared and we can now all look back and enjoy the amazing tweets that came from this one idea.

 

Also below is a link to where you can find the case study on the amazing attention the social media ad created... It's only a short watch but it just shows how much impact something like this can have... my favourite tweet? Rio Ferdinand's 'Can't wait to get home from training and finish that cardigan'

(http://www.bhatnaturally.com/featured/snickers-uk-campaign-clever-use-of-twitter/)

One of my favourite examples of the campaign....

This is by far one of my favourite poster ads from the whole campaign showcased in Germany

 

Again using imagery that men relate to and would find amusing, it's so simple and effective, using the peace sign which was designed for and adopted by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (thank you wikipedia for making me sound a little smart). Back to the point, showing the universal sign of peace inside of Darth Vader's helmet (a character from Star Wars, incase you've been living under a rock and haven't heard of him). The simple lines and colour choice, keeps the branding of Snickers and uses the main premise of the 'You're not you when you're hungry' campaign, turning into something you're not.

Just a little picture of Darth Vader because he's an epic character...

Chosen campaign

I have chosen Snickers 'You're not you when you're hungry' to tear apart and really delve into for this brief. I think that it will be an interesting campaign to look into as it's an international campaign with a lot of information behind it. 

SO to start off, here is the UK version of the Snickers 'You're not you when you're hungry' TV ad.

The use of Joan Collins and Stephanie Beacham in this ad as the diva's is where the humour starts, it's important to see that this whole campaign is based on humour and making the 'reader' laugh. The slogan 'You're not you when you're hungry' is meant to show that you make out of character decisions and act like a totally different person when you're hungry, which I think is an incredibly clever angle to selling a chocolate bar. It also gives them a wide range of ideas and scenarios to act on, meaning that this campaign has had the chance to use all the following medias; Ambient media, Online display, Magazines, Newspapers, Out of home, Public Relations, Radio, Social media, Viral, Website / Microsite, TV, Word of Mouth. I will find all examples of these over the course of the next week or so, and deconstruct them, to help me really find their main target audience with this campaign, giving me the chance to then direct my own campaign at them.

The actual UK TV advert itself is pretty interesting when it comes down to ideologies and how they are representing certain types of people, which really helps me in narrowing down the target audience. Before I even start I think it's pretty safe to say everyone can see this advert is aimed directly to the male population, but there are signs within the advert that make this even more apparent. In virtually all of the TV ads made internationally for this campaign they have only used male characters portrayed as DIVA women, never the other way round. These irritated 'hungry' men are shown as naggy, whiney divas, this implies that this is what women are like pretty much all the time, which is sure to make their target audience laugh, because who doesn't enjoy a little bit of humorous sexism. It's quite clever in that way, because if you really want to draw your audience in, why not try a bit of a light hearted attack on the opposite sex. Getting back to what the advert is implying is that men are really only diva-ish and complaining whenever they're hungry, which dis-empowers the hungry man, making him seem foolish and something to laugh at, and also disempowers women at the same time. It's a very interesting concept which works very well across the board. You can apply the same advert to different nations just tweaking a few things here and there, such as the job type of the group of men, or perhaps the scene in which it takes place. This makes it such a strong idea, which has, according to (http://www.ipaeffectivenessawards.co.uk/Entrant.aspx?id=500),

'resulted in Snickers’ most successful period of growth, increasing sales by 15.9% in one year, capturing market share in all but two of the 58 markets in which it ran, and growing global market share by US$376.3m.'

Pretty impressive campaign.