Gillette's BabyFace Haptic Texture Tablet, created by ACW Grey Tel Aviv in Israel in 2018, used touch-based technology to drive a 9% sales increase and win at
Gillette BabyFace Turns Haptic Technology Into a Shaving Argument for New Fathers
Gillette's BabyFace Haptic Texture Tablet is a 2018 digital campaign created by ACW Grey Tel Aviv with MediaCom Connections, launched in Israel in June 2018, that used haptic tablet technology to let expecting and new fathers physically compare the friction of beard stubble against a clean-shaven face — making the case for shaving through sensation rather than messaging.
The campaign's central premise rested on a single parental instinct. Beard stubble, the campaign argued, could feel genuinely rough against a newborn's delicate skin, and no father would want his face to become a physical barrier between himself and his child. Campaign copy stated that the paper used in the haptic tablets could absorb anything, channelling that emotional directness into a tactile demonstration rather than a conventional advertisement. The objective was to build emotional equity for Gillette by connecting with men at the precise moment of becoming a new father — a life transition that ACW Grey Tel Aviv identified as uniquely receptive to personal care messaging.
In Israel, the campaign extended beyond digital formats. Installations appeared in maternity wards, birth classes, and baby fairs, placing the haptic experience directly in the environments where expectant and new parents were already emotionally primed. This choice of venue was strategic: the campaign entered spaces that product advertising rarely occupies, lending Gillette's message the credibility of a health and parenting insight rather than a sales pitch. The BabyFace campaign earns a Clapboard Score of 74 out of 100, reflecting strong strategic coherence, contextually precise media placement, and measurable commercial impact anchored in a single, emotionally resonant human truth.
Gillette identified new fatherhood as an underserved emotional entry point for personal care marketing in Israel. The strategic question, as framed by Gilad Kat, Head of Planning and Regional Communication Planning Director at ACW Grey Tel Aviv, was direct: what father would want their whiskery face to stand in the way of bonding with their newborn? That question became the campaign's entire strategic architecture — a reframing of shaving not as grooming routine but as an act of parental closeness.
The global shaving and hair-removal tools market was under measurable pressure at the time. According to Mintel, the global shaving and hair-removal tools market was approximately three and a half billion dollars in 2018, down nearly four percent year over year. That contraction reflected a broader cultural shift toward beard acceptance among younger men, a trend that competitors including Dollar Shave Club and Harry's had accelerated by repositioning razors as optional rather than essential. Dollar Shave Club had disrupted subscription shaving by making price and convenience central, while Harry's competed on design and directness. Gillette's response in Israel was to locate an audience — new and expecting fathers — for whom the emotional case for shaving could outweigh the cultural drift toward facial hair.
Maayan Galili, who envisioned and led the Gillette BabyFace initiative, framed the campaign's goal explicitly as creating emotional equity by connecting to men at the moment of becoming a new father, according to LinkedIn. That framing positioned BabyFace not as a defensive response to declining category sales but as an affirmative claim on a life stage that no competitor had yet addressed with comparable specificity in the Israeli market.
ACW Grey Tel Aviv built the BabyFace campaign's creative execution around one irreducible physical experience: the difference in texture between a bearded face and a clean-shaven one, rendered through haptic tablet technology. The haptic tablets reproduced differences in friction and surface texture, allowing users to run their fingers across a simulation of beard stubble and then a smooth surface, making the abstract argument about newborn skin sensitivity into something a parent could feel for themselves in a single gesture.
Shay Chikotay is identified in production records as a creative professional on the campaign, per records documented at Clapboard.com. Moti Rubinstein and Tal Riven are also associated with the creative team at ACW Grey Tel Aviv on this project, with Riven's involvement documented in professional records cited by Clapboard.com. The deliberate integration of health-adjacent environments — maternity wards, birth preparation classes, and baby fairs — was itself a creative decision as much as a media one. By placing haptic tablets in those spaces, the agency transformed a personal care advertisement into something closer to a parenting resource, a distinction that shaped how fathers encountered and processed the message.
In April 2013, Procter and Gamble moved Gillette's global creative account from BBDO to Grey after a seven-month review, as reported by The New York Times — a transition that placed Grey in a position to develop campaigns with the kind of cultural and emotional ambition that BabyFace represents. The Israeli execution demonstrated what that creative relationship could produce when a specific, emotionally precise audience insight was matched with an equally specific media environment and a technology capable of making an argument through touch rather than language.
Gillette's BabyFace Haptic Texture Tablet campaign produced independently verified commercial and award results. The campaign achieved a nine percent increase in sales attributed directly to the BabyFace initiative, according to WARC. Among bearded fathers who experienced the campaign, consideration to shave increased by fifteen percent post-campaign, also per WARC. A thirty percent increase in the share of non-fathers favouring clean-shaving was additionally reported in connection with the campaign's broader reach, per WARC and PRNewswire.
The campaign's award recognition confirmed its standing among industry peers. BabyFace won a Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2018 in the category of Excellence in Media Insights and Strategy, as reported by Clapboard.com. At the Festival of Media Global Awards 2018, the campaign took Gold for Creative Use of Media and Silver for Creative Use of Technology, per Clapboard.com and medianews4u.com. Those results place BabyFace in a distinct category of personal care campaigns that achieved both creative recognition and traceable commercial outcomes from a single, tightly defined tactical deployment.
No single campaign element operated in isolation. The haptic technology created a memorable physical experience; the maternity ward placement ensured that experience reached the most receptive possible audience; and the emotional clarity of the message — that a father's beard could come between him and his newborn — gave the campaign a staying power that conventional advertising rarely achieves in the personal care category. The combination produced results that were measurable, attributed, and meaningful within the specific context of the Israeli market in 2018.
The Gillette BabyFace Haptic Texture Tablet is a 2018 digital campaign created by ACW Grey Tel Aviv in Israel. It used haptic tablets to let new and expecting fathers feel the difference between beard stubble and a clean-shaven face, arguing that shaving improves physical closeness with a newborn. The campaign ran in maternity wards, birth classes, and baby fairs.
ACW Grey Tel Aviv created the BabyFace campaign for Gillette, with MediaCom Connections handling media. Creative team members including Tal Riven, Moti Rubinstein, and Shay Chikotay are associated with the project, per Clapboard.com. Maayan Galili led the initiative with the goal of building emotional equity at the moment of new fatherhood, according to LinkedIn.
The BabyFace campaign won a Silver Lion at Cannes Lions 2018 in Excellence in Media Insights and Strategy, as reported by Clapboard.com. It also won Gold for Creative Use of Media and Silver for Creative Use of Technology at the Festival of Media Global Awards 2018, per Clapboard.com and medianews4u.com.
The BabyFace campaign drove a nine percent increase in Gillette sales, according to WARC. Among bearded fathers who experienced the campaign, consideration to shave rose fifteen percent post-campaign, also per WARC. Those figures make BabyFace one of the more measurably effective personal care campaigns to emerge from the Israeli market in 2018.
Gillette and ACW Grey Tel Aviv chose haptic technology because the campaign's argument was fundamentally physical. Telling fathers that beard stubble feels rough to a newborn is less persuasive than letting them feel the difference themselves. Placing haptic tablets in maternity wards and birth classes in Israel ensured that demonstration reached fathers at their most emotionally receptive moment.
Gilad Kat served as Head of Planning and Regional Communication Planning Director at ACW Grey Tel Aviv on the BabyFace campaign. He framed the campaign's core strategic question: what father would want their bearded face to stand in the way of bonding with their newborn? That question defined the campaign's entire emotional and media strategy for the Israeli market in 2018.
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