BabyFace Haptic Texture Tablet - Gillette | Clapboard Ad Archive

Gillette’s BabyFace Haptic Texture Tablet campaign, created by Grey and launched in Israel in 2018, broke new ground in personal care marketing by targeting new and expecting fathers with a digital experience designed to demonstrate the developmental benefits of soft, warm skin-to-skin contact between dads and their babies. This campaign used haptic technology in an innovative way to deliver a tactile contrast between the roughness of beard stubble and the smoothness of a clean-shaven face, compelling fathers to reconsider their grooming habits for the sake of their newborns’ comfort and well-being. By placing interactive media assets in maternity wards, birth classes, and baby fairs, Gillette ensured direct engagement with its core audience at moments when the emotional connection between father and child is most salient. This hands-on approach gave the campaign a sensory immediacy rarely seen in health-related personal care advertising and reinforced the brand’s positioning against the competition, which here is not just rival razors but the broader cultural trend of beard fashion. The use of FORMAT#4—Contrast with the Competition, as defined by Clapboard’s taxonomy, is central to the campaign’s strategy, framing the clean-shaven face as the superior choice for dads who want to nurture their babies through touch, thereby aligning product benefits with emotional and developmental stakes. The campaign’s integration of technology with an empathetic message garnered industry recognition, including a Silver award at the Festival of Media in 2018. Clapboard rates this campaign 74/100. This campaign matters to the industry because it demonstrates how personal care brands can leverage emerging technologies like haptics to create meaningful sensory experiences that go beyond conventional visual or narrative storytelling, thereby expanding the possibilities for health-focused advertising to engage consumers on multiple levels.