Manscaped built a $1 billion brand on a single, extremely specific product category. The company spent years providing men with tools for their privates. The joke was always part of the brand’s identity. The product was always the joke. In July 2025, Manscaped and Special U.S. deployed that accumulated brand permission in service of an entirely different product category, launching a campaign whose title was the punchline, the product brief, and the cultural observation all at once.
The Campaign
“Send Face Pics Instead” kicks off with a cheeky hero spot, developed in partnership with creative agency Special U.S., that takes a playful jab at modern digital habits. It opens with the familiar dings and pings of late-night texts as women react with shock and maybe a little delight at the unexpected images lighting up their phones. But these aren’t those kinds of pics. Instead, they’re seeing a face.
The grooming brand is now turning its attention upward with a push designed to elevate men’s facial care habits and self-image. The hero film features Manscaped’s newest face shaving tools, and runs across national broadcast and streaming outlets including Paramount+, Hulu, and Peacock, alongside Manscaped’s YouTube channel and social media platforms.
The Strategic Shift
Manscaped already had partnerships with UFC on what could be perceived as one end of masculinity, the more physical, strong, man culture, and also drag queen shows. The brand had always been comfortable with the full spectrum of what masculinity looks like. The face campaign extends that comfort into a new product category while keeping the same tone.
Marcelo Kertész, Chief Marketing Officer at MANSCAPED, described the expansion directly: “We’ve spent years providing men with tools for their privates. Now we’ve got something for their publics, too. By putting the spotlight on faces, we’re giving guys not only the tools but the permission to love how they look, and to send the kind of pics that actually get a response.”
The phrase “permission to love how they look” is the strategic pivot in one line. Manscaped’s existing brand equity is built on making men comfortable with a body area that most grooming brands have historically ignored. The face campaign applies the same logic to a different body part: men are often more self-conscious about their faces than their brand communications typically acknowledge, and Manscaped is positioning itself as the brand that gives them tools and confidence in equal measure.
The Research
To put its money where its mouth is, MANSCAPED commissioned a study with Kwantlen Polytechnic University and the O.R.G.A.S.M Research Lab to explore gender differences in digital flirting preferences. The study provided the campaign with proprietary data to support its central argument: that a well-groomed face photograph is more likely to generate a positive response than the alternative format that men have historically favoured on late-night messaging platforms.
The Activation
Manscaped rolled out bi-coastal OOH installations in Austin, Brooklyn, Chicago, and San Francisco. The brand also showed up in dating app takeovers, trendy creator-led content, influencer activations, and engaging social posts. The dating app placement is the media buy that most precisely targets the exact moment the campaign’s argument is relevant: the point at which someone is deciding what kind of photograph to send.
The Creative Team
The campaign was created by Special U.S., with Chief Creative Officers and Partners Matthew Woodhams-Roberts and Dave Horton leading the creative, alongside Creative Directors Chris Juhas, Adrien Bindi, Jon Marshall, and Kris Wixom. Special U.S. is an independent creative agency based in Los Angeles and New York, recognised as the number one most effective independent network in the world by WARC in 2024 and Global Creative Agency of the Year by Campaign UK in 2021 and 2023.
Why the Campaign Works
The title does everything. “Send Face Pics Instead” is a four-word campaign that simultaneously references a widespread male digital behaviour, proposes an alternative, and implies the product that makes the alternative worth proposing. It requires no additional explanation because the cultural context it draws from is universal and immediately understood.
The campaign also resolves a specific commercial problem for Manscaped as a brand. Expanding from a single category, below-the-belt grooming, into facial care requires communicating that the brand has credibility in the new category without abandoning the identity that built the existing one. The “Instead” in the campaign title performs that transition. It acknowledges where the brand has been and directs the audience toward where it is going, without pretending the journey did not start where it did.
Campaign Name: Send Face Pics Instead
Agency Name: Special U.S., Los Angeles and New York / CEO and Partner: Kelsey Hodgkin / CCOs and Partners: Matthew Woodhams-Roberts, Dave Horton / Creative Directors: Chris Juhas, Adrien Bindi, Jon Marshall, Kris Wixom
Brand Name: Manscaped / CMO: Marcelo Kertész
Location: United States (national broadcast, streaming, OOH in Austin, Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco; dating app takeovers; social media; launched July 22, 2025)
