Havas ECD Mark Fairbanks Talks Style for V05

Young men are more in control of their image than ever, says Havas Worldwide London’s ECD Mark Fairbanks. A new campaign for V05 produced by Knucklehead adopts this approach to self-experimentation through hairstyling.

The new Latin American-inspired V05 ads were created by executive creative director Mark Fairbanks of Havas Worldwide London.

Contrasting two protagonists from different backgrounds, the similarly structured 60-second spots cleverly advertise different hair products. After a chance encounter, the characters become inspired by one another – swapping lives… and hairstyles. The General uses V05’s Casual Control putty and the Peasant, the Thicken Up lifting paste.

Below, Mark talks to Shots about the inspiration behind the ad and the importance of appealing to Generation Y.

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What was the brief you received from the client for the campaign?

The brief was to advertise multiple products using the same vehicle. But the challenge was particularly around Casual Control – which is designed not to look like a product at all, making it more difficult to convey in an ad.   

What was the inspiration behind your idea?

The breakthrough was noticing that the two products were actually opposites. Thicken Up was designed to enable people to show off and stand out in a crowd, with the look clearly using hair product. Casual Control, on the other hand, was a product designed to cater for those who don’t want to be as structured in their use of product, and for those preferring a natural look.

Tell us a bit more about the protagonist…

Although the main characters in both ads have a life, friends and a job, the main guy doesn’t feel like he is being himself. He's not oppressed; instead he feels that he has drifted into his role by default – because of where and when he was born. This is the mould that he wants to break out of, a change from the more regime-led narratives we’ve seen before.

Why did you decide to create two mirroring ads to tell the story?

To show that it doesn't matter what you want to be. Being true to yourself is what matters most. That fact that the two characters each wanted what the other had shows that it's not the status of the goal that's important, but the fact that it's true to your own identity.

How did you shape the ads to target Gen Y viewers/consumers?

Young men these days are not oppressed or denied expression in the way some might have felt in the past. The ‘Break the Mould’ positioning of VO5 was relevant to an authoritarian world which has largely disappeared. The problem today is being true to yourself, especially in a world of social media where approval from peers is so important.

Were there any particular challenges in attempting to target Gen Y instead of Gen X?

The challenges were welcome ones, in that it allowed the VO5 brand campaign to break away from its simplistic treatment of teens as forever fighting the system, allowing us to address the new challenge to young people - finding who you really are.
 
We also had to think about the fact that young men have changed, they are more concerned about their appearance and attach more emotion and identity to it. For this reason we see the VO5 brand forking into new identities, because young men are doing the same.

 What were the challenges involved with creating the campaign?

Most challenges were logistical, finding characters, locations, props that matched, creating a structure that worked for both, figuring out angles, background action, vehicles, and camera movement and so on, that mirrored the other commercial.

 How important is good hair for your client and target audience and do you think your ads succeed in getting that across?

Good hair is critical not just in the story telling – which shows the audience that the character has changed – but also within the hero hairstyles as they needed to relate to the relevant male styling trends. Young men today are more involved in crafting their own image and identity and this can take both casual and structured forms, so it was important to portray this.

You’re known to produce very emotive adverts. Is this an intentional focus?

It's not intentional, but a reflection of the young, male target market for whom hair style is all about confidence, self-expression and peer approval. Being image conscious is no longer seen as a feminine trait and we now fully expect men to take care of their image – our ads have simply followed this trend where male hair products are no longer just functional but emotional too.