BIC Be Flex Turns a Razor Into a Dance Performance
BIC's "Be Flex" is a 2018 film campaign created by Paris agency Hungry and Foolish for the BIC Flex 5 men's razor, released in France in October 2018, using a split-screen format to pair a man shaving with a dancer whose choreography mirrors the razor's movements, translating a functional shaving-performance proposition into a kinetic visual metaphor.
The campaign centres on a single film asset distributed across television and digital channels in France and subsequently rolled out across more than ten European countries, with a planned second phase for 2019, as documented by Corporate Bic. The geographic ambition signals that the French market served as the primary launch territory and creative proving ground for what BIC intended as a broader pan-European proposition for the BIC Flex 5 razor range.
The strategic objective is straightforward: reframe a consumer durables product — a men's razor — away from clinical performance claims and toward expressive, culturally resonant imagery. In France, where personal grooming advertising competes for attention alongside established category heavyweights, BIC chose to lead with feeling rather than specification. The split-screen device gives the film its structural tension, placing the act of shaving and the act of dancing in a direct visual dialogue, with each discipline reinforcing the other's sense of precision, flow, and control. The word "flex" operates simultaneously as product name, physical descriptor, and aspirational verb, giving the campaign its conceptual spine. Clapboard Score for "Be Flex" is 63 out of 100, reflecting a coherent creative idea executed with craft, though without the measurable market impact that would elevate it further.
BIC operates in the French shaving category against competitors including Gillette, whose Fusion and Mach ranges dominate mass-market shelf presence, and Wilkinson Sword, which has maintained consistent European distribution. In this context, BIC's decision to anchor "Be Flex" in performance metaphor rather than direct product comparison reflects a considered positioning choice for a brand whose shaver division sits within a broader portfolio that, according to Investors Bic, generated total group sales of approximately €1.95 billion in 2018 across stationery, lighters, and shavers combined.
The dance metaphor addresses a specific consumer insight: flexibility and control are abstract qualities that technical demonstrations alone struggle to convey compellingly on screen. By embodying those qualities in a dancer's physical vocabulary, Hungry and Foolish translate an engineering attribute — the Flex 5's pivoting five-blade head — into something a viewer can feel rather than simply read. In France, where cultural fluency with movement-based arts gives dance significant mainstream legibility, this creative register has practical resonance beyond mere aesthetics.
The split-screen format itself carries strategic weight. It refuses to separate product from aspiration, holding both in simultaneous view and forcing the audience to read one through the other. This structural choice positions the BIC Flex 5 not as a functional utility but as an instrument of personal performance, a distinction that matters in a category where office equipment and consumer durables advertising often defaults to speed and price as its primary registers. The film medium, distributed through both television and digital channels as documented by adsoftheworld.com, extends that argument to audiences across multiple platforms in France and across Europe.
Director Loren Denis of production company Lesfilsde helmed "Be Flex," bringing a choreographic sensibility to what is, at its core, a product demonstration film. Denis's approach treats the split-screen not as a post-production trick but as the film's primary expressive grammar, requiring that the razor user's gestures and the dancer's movements be conceived and shot as a unified visual system rather than assembled in editing. The result is a piece in which timing carries the argument: the rhythm of the shave and the rhythm of the dance resolve into each other with the precision the campaign's name promises.
Creative direction was handled by Emmanuel François-Eugène, with art direction by Quentin Delachaux and copy by Stéphane Le Frapper, as documented by both adsoftheworld.com and Business Ladn Eu. Hungry and Foolish, the Paris agency behind the campaign, built their concept around the word "flex" as a generative constraint — a term that had to work as product name, physical quality, and cultural posture simultaneously. Le Frapper's copywriting honours that constraint by staying minimal, allowing the visual argument to carry most of the persuasive load.
The film's production design maintains a tonal consistency between the two split-screen environments, preventing the juxtaposition from reading as incongruous. Colour palette, lighting temperature, and set dressing across both frames create the impression of a shared world rather than two separate shoots placed side by side. This coherence is essential to the metaphor's credibility: if the visual registers diverge too sharply, the implied equivalence between shaving and dance collapses. The discipline with which Lesfilsde and Hungry and Foolish maintain that coherence is the campaign's primary craft achievement, and the quality most visible when the film is viewed as a piece of cinematographic work rather than purely as advertising.
No verified performance data for "Be Flex" is publicly available. The campaign did not appear in the records of Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, as confirmed by clapboard.com. No independent market research attributing measurable shifts in BIC Flex 5 sales or brand consideration in France to this campaign has been published.
Structural analysis offers a more productive frame for evaluation. The split-screen format creates instant visual distinctiveness in a category — men's razors — where advertising frequently relies on close-up product shots and endorsement. By contrast, "Be Flex" builds its case through formal invention, giving the film a stronger claim on viewer attention during the first few seconds where retention decisions are made. The pan-European rollout across more than ten countries, as documented by corporate.bic.com, suggests BIC's internal evaluation of the creative was sufficiently positive to justify extended distribution investment beyond France.
The campaign's primary structural risk is abstraction. A viewer who does not already know the BIC Flex 5 must work to connect the dance metaphor to the product's specific functional benefit. For a brand that, according to investors.bic.com, operated approximately four million points of sale worldwide in 2018, shelf presence provides a compensating context — the campaign does not need to do all the explanatory work alone. Clapboard's editorial score of 63 out of 100 reflects this balance: a campaign with genuine creative ambition and disciplined execution, constrained by the absence of demonstrable market outcomes and the inherent challenge of translating a physical product benefit through an entirely metaphorical register.
BIC's "Be Flex" is a 2018 film campaign created by Hungry and Foolish in France for the BIC Flex 5 men's razor. It uses a split-screen format to pair a man shaving with a dancer whose movements mirror the razor's flexibility, translating a functional product attribute into a kinetic visual metaphor broadcast on television and digital channels.
Hungry and Foolish, a Paris-based agency, created "Be Flex" for BIC. The campaign was directed by Loren Denis of Lesfilsde, with creative direction by Emmanuel François-Eugène, art direction by Quentin Delachaux, and copywriting by Stéphane Le Frapper, as documented by adsoftheworld.com and business.ladn.eu.
The split-screen device holds the razor user and dancer in simultaneous view, forcing the audience to read shaving through the lens of physical performance. Dance gives abstract product qualities — flexibility and control — a physically legible form, an especially effective register in France, where movement-based arts carry strong mainstream cultural familiarity.
"Be Flex" launched in France in October 2018 and subsequently rolled out across more than ten European countries, with a planned second phase for 2019, according to corporate.bic.com. France served as the primary launch territory and creative proving ground for the broader pan-European campaign supporting the BIC Flex 5 razor range.
"Be Flex" did not win awards at Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, The One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC Awards, as confirmed by clapboard.com. The campaign earned a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting coherent creative execution without documented measurable market outcomes in France or elsewhere.
"Be Flex" advertises the BIC Flex 5 Hybrid men's razor. The Flex 5 features a five-blade pivoting head, and the campaign's entire creative concept — including the dancer's choreography and the split-screen structure — is built to dramatise that flexibility as a performance-oriented, aspirational quality for male consumers in France and across Europe.
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