Yesterday, AdWeek reported on an ad campaign promoting M6 Razorblades in which an Israeli man shaves his beard off after 14 years. The commercial was filmed almost like a mini documentary and you get to experience the real emotional reaction from his wife, child, etc.
Since the story delves into the man’s personal connection to his beard, I thought it would be interesting to get a broader perspective. No time for a focus group or survey, I of course turned to our social media analytics which in a matter of minutes surfaced the top 10 things men like and dislike about their beards.
What you’ll see in the analysis below are a couple of wonderful dichotomies pertaining to speed and strength of beard growth. In other words, some men think their beards grow fast and others think it grows too slow. And others are proud to boast of their beard’s “strength” and others are ashamed of how “weak” their beard is. It stands to reason that men would talk about the virility of their beard, as a beard is a signature feature of masculinity.
The top three things men speak about positively regarding their beard are: that they like when it “comes in nicely”, that it grows “fast”, and that their beard game is “strong”. Here are the top 10 things they liked with a sound bite representing the thousands of other similar comments:
What Men Like about Their Beards
The top three things men complain about their beards are that it’s “itchy”, it actually grows “too fast” (as opposed to other men above who were proud of how fast their beards grow), and that their beard game was “weak” (again, a nice contrast to the opposite finding above). Here are the top 10 things men dislike about their beards:
Some of the illustrative sound bites had some wonderful selfies of men and their beards. NetBase’s recent addition of Tumblr has been a great source of this colorful imagery.
Here are some from the positive data set:
Here are some from the negative data set:
