Dollar Shave Club Stays Ridiculous With a Visit to Creamy Shave Butter Dreamworld

Dollar Shave Club wants you to know it's new shave butter product feels so buttery good, it will make you hallucinate. A 30-second ad opens on a young man shaving in a gym locker room. As he smears the product on his face, he sighs in ecstasy, and trust-falls backwards. The tile floor melts as he strikes it, enveloping him in a buttery dream world, where he slides and slithers around with surprising ease, grace and purpose, on buttery cloud-like dunes of shave butter. By the way, did the ad mention it's buttery there, in shave-butter land? [kickout id="1"] But wait, there's more—the spot packs it in. First, our hero passes a long-haired white pussy cat (get it?) hanging out on a luxurious silver tree limb. Then, he happens upon what appears to be Colonel Sanders' younger, slimmer brother—who, you might be forgiven for thinking, clearly opted to become a literal pimp instead of guzzling fried chicken all day—standing towering on top of a buttery mountain, wielding a giant silvery straight razor. In fact, it turns out this new character is actually some kind of exceptionally well-dressed scientist-wizard, who, based on his look, might also moonlight as the second most interesting man in the actual world … but is definitely the first most interesting man in this buttery dreamworld. The sage—perhaps Dollar Shave Club CEO Michael Dubin in an alternate reality or some utopian future—with a mere breath and flourish of his hand, blows all the hair clean off the young man's face. Also, off the pussy cat (get it?), and the hairy coconuts (get it?) that you might not have seen dangling in the background, also from silver branches. The voiceover trumpets, complete with melodramatic pauses, that the stuff "is going to change your life." Suddenly, the camera delivers a rude but hilarious cut back to the gym locker room, where a naked middle-aged man has struck an epic pose, one leg up on a bench, waving a blowdryer up the towel wrapped around his waist, his face the picture of perfect bliss. "Well, the shave part of your life," adds the voiceover, conceding that you will still probably be uncomfortable all the time, just for other reasons. Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes video, shot in 360 degrees for some reason, reveals that the star of the ad did in fact get to wiggle through a trough of buttery goop, albeit in front of a green screen. [kickout id="2"] Overall, it's an absurdist, amusing tack that tracks back—in general humorous tone, at least—through the company's advertising since it burst onto the market some five years ago. It's also notable for giving a bigger role to the hairless cat, which was part of a larger ensemble in the the brand's 2015 holiday campaign. It just goes to show if you stick with it for long enough, you get the cream. Or at least, the butter.

AdFreak

Dollar Shave Club Stays Ridiculous With a Visit to Creamy Shave Butter Dreamworld

A luxurious escape, even if reality is still awkward

Gabriel Beltrone

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Gabriel Beltrone