The Dollar Shave Club is known for their offbeat approach to advertising men's grooming products. With a presidential election on the horizon, they asked for our help to capitalize on the buzz of current events and pull their brand into the spotlight.
We wanted to create a series of content pieces that would be quirky, smart, and extremely shareable. Our strategy was to associate the Dollar Shave Club brand with our great American forefathers without sacrificing the brand's tongue in cheek personality. The idea was to engage consumers with a faux election microsite with the chance to win discounts and prizes. The hook would be a series of 16 presidential campaign posters depicting past presidents as if they were running in the 2012 election. The final poster would feature the Democratic and Republican candidates shaving together with Dollar Shave Club razors.
We worked with Dollar Shave Club to concept, illustrate and write copy for the presidential campaign posters. The tone of the campaign focused on bridging American history with the digital era-- from James Polk snapping a selfie on his iPhone to Abe Lincoln mixing artisanal cocktails to Teddy Roosevelt posing in a pair of hip moose-printed swim trunks. We developed a "vintage meets vector" aesthetic, blending past and present to create a distinct and slightly edgy campaign identity.
Beyond rolling these shareable assets out on social networking sites and including prints with their monthly razor deliveries, we built OldGlory2012.org to showcase the posters, aggregate social chatter, and enable visitors to vote and share for a chance to win discounts and prizes. The site also offered little known facts about each president, emphasizing the revolutionary 'swagger' each one possessed and drawing further ties between early ideas and modern society.
The site and campaign posters were widely shared around the social web by Dollar Shave Club fans, who selected Abe Lincoln as the best president to "shave our great nation." The poster series was also prominently featured in Communication Arts magazine.
