Manscaped's Super Bowl Ad Strategy Explained

Manscaped made its Super Bowl debut with a campaign built around anthropomorphic hair monsters. That's the premise. Hairy little creatures, personifying the problem the product solves.

It's a strange choice on paper. The Super Bowl costs tens of millions of dollars for thirty seconds. Most brands play it safe — celebrity cameo, nostalgia, emotional arc. Manscaped went the other way. Absurdist. Gross-funny. Hard to ignore.

And that's the point. When you're a younger brand in a crowded body grooming category, safe doesn't cut through. You need people talking the next morning. Hair monsters will do that.

The creative direction traces back to Marcelo Kertesz, the brand's CMO. That matters more than it might seem.

A lot of brands at Manscaped's scale outsource the big swings to an agency and hope for the best. The creative ends up committee-approved and bloodless. What makes this campaign feel different is that the weirdness feels intentional all the way up. Someone in the room with budget authority actually wanted the hair monsters.

That kind of conviction — someone willing to defend a strange idea to a CFO — is rarer than it should be. And it tends to produce better advertising.

Body grooming is an awkward category to advertise. The product is real and useful. But talking about it directly, earnestly, in a Super Bowl spot — that's a minefield.

Humor is the escape valve. It lets the brand name the problem without making anyone uncomfortable. You laugh at the hair monster. You get the message. You don't feel like you're sitting through an infomercial.

Manscaped has done this more than once. There's another spot in the same register — same absurdist energy, same willingness to be a little ridiculous. It's not an accident. It's a tonal strategy. They've decided this is who they are, and they're committing to it.

All of this is ultimately selling a trimmer. Specifically the Lawn Mower 5, their current flagship. The joke is the wrapper. The product is the point.

This is a useful reminder about advertising in general. Entertaining ads that don't sell anything are just entertainment. The best ones do both — you remember the bit, and you remember the brand, and somewhere downstream you're standing in a pharmacy and the name surfaces.

Manscaped has built enough brand recognition now that the Super Bowl spot isn't just awareness. It's reinforcement. They're not introducing themselves. They're reminding you they exist and that they're the funny ones.

Not every brand can do what Manscaped did. A lot of categories don't have permission to be this weird.

But the underlying logic applies broadly. Pick a tone and commit to it. Don't try to be funny and also sincere and also premium in the same thirty seconds. Audiences read incoherence immediately, even if they can't name it.

Manscaped picked a lane — absurdist humor, self-aware about the awkwardness of what they sell — and they've stayed in it across multiple campaigns. That consistency is what makes the brand feel like a brand and not just a product with ads.

The hair monsters are silly. The strategy behind them is not.