• by Karlene Lukovitz , July 5, 2016

In case you hadn’t guessed, most of those dudes sporting bushy beards, plaid shirts, jeans and work boots on city streets aren’t really lumberjacks.

Hearty-meals brand Dinty Moore, which was named after a lumberjack, is poking fun at these metrosexuals who affect rugged garb — dubbed “lumbersexuals” — by trying to turn them into lumberjacks.

For the video- and social media-driven campaign, from BBDO, the brand hired a real lumberjack, named Adrian Flygt, to train some lumbersexuals in the skills of the trade. 

The plan is to have them compete on July 15 in the Stihl Timbersports U.S. Pro & Collegiate Championships in Chicago, known as “the Olympics of timbersports.” The event’s competitions include wood chopping, axe throwing and sawing.

The guys in the videos — who are not actors, according to a brand spokesperson — include an interior house painter, an IT professional, a wedding photographer and an “avid role-playing gamer.” Their bios list hobbies like hip-hop dancing and facial hair primping.

And indeed, the training videos show numerous instances (above) of them demonstrating concern about their hair in the midst of trying to perform demanding feats like hitting a target with an ax or manually sawing through a large tree trunk.

The real lumberjack, who acknowledges that he had never heard of a lumbersexual until he laid eyes on these men, makes puzzled, deadpan comments about his students, like: “They really worry about how they look, and if they look right, if they look good. They think about looking good like if it makes a good selfie, not looking good like, ‘Am I able to do my logging right?’” 

A campaign site, moorejacks.com, offers clips from the casting for the campaign, long- and short-form videos of the training sessions, the bios, and links to share the content via Facebook or Twitter.

Users are also being encouraged to tag their lumbersexual friends with #moorejacks.

The videos are also on Dinty Moore’s YouTube channel.