Dollar Shave Club's Manifique campaign launched in June 2019 in the United States to celebrate the DadBod Gift Set with a body-positive film and original song.
ARCHIVEDollar Shave Club Embraces the Dad Bod for Father's Day 2019
Dollar Shave Club's "Manifique: A Father's Day Gift" is a June 2019 United States campaign that uses humour, body diversity, and an original song to promote the brand's first-ever DadBod Gift Set, challenging the polished-grooming imagery that defines most personal care advertising.
The campaign centres on a roughly two-minute film featuring a choreographed line of men with varied body types dancing in towels, robes, and underwear while performing an original composition titled "Dadbod." The film closes with the message "Whatever your bod, welcome to the club," a line that distils the campaign's inclusive philosophy into a single declarative statement and anchors it directly to the brand's long-standing anti-establishment voice. The creative asset ran across social, digital, and television channels, giving the campaign broad reach during the Father's Day gifting window in the United States.
The campaign was produced by Dollar Shave Club's in-house creative team, with production handled jointly by Revolver / Will O'Rourke and Biscuit Filmworks, and direction provided by The Glue Society, according to The Drum. It sits within the Health and personal care category and was submitted to the Clapboard archive approximately six years after its release, where it holds a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. The Manifique campaign represents a deliberate strategic departure from the aspirational body imagery that competitors in the United States men's grooming market have historically favoured, using celebration rather than aspiration as its primary emotional register.
Dollar Shave Club operates in a competitive United States men's shaving industry that was valued at approximately $2.8 billion in 2019, according to Euromonitor. Within that market, Gillette and its parent company Procter and Gamble held approximately 47 to 53 percent of US market share around 2018 and 2019, according to data reported by axios.com and beautymatter.com, while Schick and its parent Edgewell held approximately 10 to 17 percent of the US market over the same period, according to spectrumlocalnews.com and cnbc.com. Against those incumbents, Dollar Shave Club and Unilever held approximately 8.5 to 11 percent of the US market around 2018 and 2019, according to businessinsider.com and cnbc.com, giving the brand a clear incentive to differentiate on cultural territory rather than compete on product features or retail scale.
The Manifique campaign targets the Father's Day gifting occasion directly, a seasonal moment when personal care purchases in the United States shift from habitual self-purchase toward considered gifting. By introducing the DadBod Gift Set as a product concept, Dollar Shave Club frames the purchase as an act of recognition rather than correction, inverting the implicit message of most grooming advertising. Where competitors such as Gillette have historically used imagery of chiselled, aspirational physiques to sell razors and grooming products in the United States, Dollar Shave Club positions the dad bod not as a problem to be solved but as an identity to be celebrated. This strategic framing aligns with a broader cultural conversation around body acceptance that was particularly visible in the United States in 2019, giving the campaign a degree of cultural relevance beyond the personal care category. The 2019 campaign extends the irreverent, self-aware tone that Dollar Shave Club established with its widely shared 2012 launch video, which reportedly generated more than 28 million views over time, according to thedrum.com and retaildive.com.
ARCHIVEThe Glue Society directed the Manifique film for Dollar Shave Club. The direction leans into choreographed absurdism, staging a line of men in towels, robes, and underwear as a unified chorus performing the original "Dadbod" song with deadpan commitment. The choice of real-looking men with varied body types is not incidental; it is the primary creative argument, making casting itself a form of messaging in a category where body homogeneity has long been the default.
Russell Boyd served as Director of Photography on the production, according to thedrum.com, bringing a level of cinematographic craft to what might otherwise read as a novelty spot. The lighting and framing treat the performers with the same visual seriousness applied to conventional grooming advertising, which reinforces the campaign's core rhetorical move: these bodies deserve the same attention and celebration as any other. The production was handled jointly by Revolver / Will O'Rourke and Biscuit Filmworks, two production companies with established track records in high-craft commercial work, according to thedrum.com.
The in-house creative team at Dollar Shave Club drove the campaign, with Executive Creative Directors Matt Knapp and Alec Brownstein and Senior Creative Director Matt Orser leading the creative development, according to thedrum.com. VP of Brand Communications Raechelle Hoki and VP of Consumer and Corporate Communications Kristina Cole oversaw the brand and communications dimensions of the 2019 campaign, also per thedrum.com. The original "Dadbod" song functions as both earworm and manifesto, embedding the campaign's message in a format designed for shareability across the social and digital channels that carried the US rollout alongside its television placement. Kyle O'Brien, writing for thedrum.com on June 4, 2019, published positive coverage praising the advertisement's celebration of body diversity, noting its departure from the polished imagery that defines much of the personal care category in the United States.
No verified performance data for the Manifique: A Father's Day Gift campaign is publicly available, and no award credits for the 2019 Dollar Shave Club campaign have been documented in the sources reviewed for this analysis.
Structurally, the campaign is built for earned media amplification. The combination of an original song, choreographed absurdism, and a culturally resonant subject in the dad bod creates multiple vectors for organic sharing across social platforms in the United States, which reduces dependence on paid distribution to generate reach. The closing line, "Whatever your bod, welcome to the club," functions as a brand positioning statement that extends well beyond the Father's Day occasion, suggesting the campaign was designed with longer-term brand equity goals as well as short-term DadBod Gift Set sales in mind.
The campaign's deployment across social, digital, and television channels indicates a media investment consistent with a major seasonal push rather than a low-budget social experiment, which in turn signals that Dollar Shave Club, operating within Unilever following the approximately $1 billion acquisition reported by forbes.com in July 2016, had the resources to back the creative with meaningful distribution. The Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100 reflects competent execution of a clear strategic idea, with headroom that likely reflects the campaign's reliance on a single film asset and the absence of documented measurable outcomes rather than any fundamental weakness in the creative concept itself.
Dollar Shave Club's Manifique campaign is a June 2019 United States film that promotes the brand's first DadBod Gift Set. It features men with varied body types dancing in towels and underwear to an original song, closing with the message "Whatever your bod, welcome to the club," according to thedrum.com.
The Glue Society directed the Manifique film for Dollar Shave Club in 2019. Russell Boyd served as Director of Photography, and production was handled jointly by Revolver / Will O'Rourke and Biscuit Filmworks, according to thedrum.com. The in-house creative team included Executive Creative Directors Matt Knapp and Alec Brownstein.
The DadBod Gift Set was Dollar Shave Club's first product of its kind, launched for Father's Day 2019 in the United States. The Manifique campaign was designed to introduce it, positioning the set as a celebratory gift for fathers rather than a corrective grooming solution, according to thedrum.com.
Manifique extends the irreverent, anti-establishment tone Dollar Shave Club established with its 2012 launch video, which reportedly generated more than 28 million views over time, according to thedrum.com. The 2019 campaign applies that voice to body positivity, challenging the polished grooming imagery favoured by competitors such as Gillette in the United States market.
Dollar Shave Club's Manifique: A Father's Day Gift holds a Clapboard Score of 64 out of 100. That score reflects competent execution of a clear strategic idea, with headroom attributed to the campaign's reliance on a single film asset and the absence of publicly documented measurable performance outcomes.
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