Commentary

Well Done Chat About . . . Unwanted Facial Hair

When Defy Media hyped its new spin-off ClevverTV series, “Beauty Trippin’ “ at NewFronts a bit ago, it touted its obvious desirability as a place for custom product integration. Yesterday, on what is the second episode of the series, it introduced one, for Nair, weaseling in references to its new Wax Ready Strips.

By Friday afternoon, roughly 24 hours after it appeared on YouTube, that edition of “Beauty Trippin’ “ had nearly a quarter of a million views.

“Beauty Trippin’ “ is an add-on to “Beauty Break,” hosted (and everything-elsed) by Lily Marston and Joslyn Davis, two energetic, chatty women who’ve had a variety of  behind-the-camera jobs in Los Angeles. They laugh a lot and talk over each other; on a cross-country trip, they would become your best friends forever,  or you’d end up killing both of them.  

The idea is that they’ll hop into Davis’s car, open an envelope and discover some surprise, bizarre beauty treatment they’ll be sent to experience that day. 

For this Nair-fronted episode, they’re off to be taught the fine points of modeling.

On the drive over, Marston grabs a box of the Ready Strips from the shopping bag of  supplies they may need for this adventure. It’s a pretty good integration, since Nair is selling this as a product you can use when you’re on the go.

“We wanted it to come up spontaneously,” said Robyn Safran,  the group manager for Nair and related products. “This fit perfectly.”

 That’s true. I thought about this a bit and concluded that a smooth introduction of a hair removal product into a conversation can't be that easy. This is about as good as it gets.

When Marston introduces the product, she reads the side of the box that explains how it can be used on a person’s upper lip or brow and how it can be used for a bikini wax.

“I don’t know if this show is ready for a bikini wax on camera,” Davis exclaims,  and that leads naturally, into the women using the product--it’s  applied like a Band-Aid and then ripped off--on their upper lips. 

“This is so easy you can do it in your car,” Davis tells her car-mates (and so far a quarter million viewers). “You guys, these are so awesome.”

It seems pretty natural, even--or especially--when, as Marston rips off her Nair strip, she slightly grimaces.

“There’s no getting around that,”  Safran says. “The function of using it can hurt a little bit. But it needs to feel genuine and relatable and in the tone of the influencer. That’s been a problem for us and other conventional CPG advertisers. We’re a little more conservative. But for it to work, it has to fit both ways, for the brand and the hosts.”

A second Nair integration into “Beauty Trippin’ “ will hit YouTube on June 2, that one featuring Nair Nourish depilatory, which Safran admits, is a little tougher to work in as easily as the Ready Strips.

For Defy, the Nair involvement is a demonstration it’s making good on a brag it made at NewFronts to actually make the programs it said it will--that’s become a controversy over the last few NewFronts.  

These sponsored bits don’t seem to bother viewers, and Saffron says Nair is ready to do more with Defy. So far, there have been almost 1,300 comments about the episode, most of them about the modeling portion of 11-minute episode not discussed here. But a few centered on the problem of problem hair.  “Damn I need those wax strips.” wrote one viewer. “I'm Asian and have the darkest hair ever, and I have such a noticeable mustache. Ever since third grade people have been commenting about it. It absolutely sucks.”


pj@mediapost.com
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