Contemporary Masculinity for Men’s personal care
The Challenge: The client, a leading men’s personal care brand, had not picked up growth since Covid. They needed to find a new celebrity face for their comms, for which there were internal discussions regarding the best metrics to use for selection.
Our Approach: We selected a large sample of texts from popular culture- Instagram pages of celebrities including sports stars, actors and influencers and a few media reports and web series. This, in turn, helped us understand the contemporary codes of masculinity in the social imaginary. We then matched and aligned both the brand and its competitors’ to these codes to find the most underleveraged ones, which we could ‘own’ and ‘drive’ forward for future comms.
Insights from Semiotic Decoding:
1. The semiotic decoding led us to understand how different platforms showcased different types of masculinity: Instagram enables aspirational masculinity, while webseries and OTT are enablers of mirrored, everyday masculinity.
2. The role model man portrayed on Instagram rests on five dimensions: Identity, Achievement, Social power, Relationships and Lifestyle. We found various codes in each of these five dimensions, to understand further how aspirational masculinity is portrayed.
3. Our study highlighted how today’s context emphasises values of gender equality, egalitarianism, Global-Indianess as well as intense pressure on young men to be well-rounded in all dimensions of life.
Results:
Our analysis and the codes identified gave the Client a clear direction and way forward for redirecting their communication with a new face.