Nutrafol is taking Emmy viewers behind the scenes with E! red carpet correspondent Zanna Roberts Rassi — not to revel in awards-show glamour, but to get a sense of how choosing wellness can be an important milestone in one’s hair growth journey.
The Unilever-owned hair wellness brand aired a new campaign, “Be An After,” on Live with E! during the 78th Emmy Awards. The campaign also included a custom social segment spotlighting Roberts Rassi’s experience using Nutrafol, while the ad spots present a reimagined take on a long-running staple of the hair category: the before and after.
Created by agency nice&frank, each of the new spots opens on a stereotypical pair of before-and-after photos, with a voice-over explaining that the person in the pictures felt different long before the “after.”
“There’s so much of the story that’s missing between those two points on the journey to finding yourself again that usually gets skipped,” Rob Stone, creative director at nice&frank, wrote in an email to ADWEEK. “We used a variety of mixed media cameras and techniques to convey the raw and unpolished part, rewinding all the way back to that moment you decided to make a change with Nutrafol.”
From postpartum recovery to divorce to marathon training, the three ad spots demonstrate the various factors that can lead to troubles with hair growth. Hair thinning is “incredibly personal,” so deciding to do something about it can be a meaningful moment in itself, Nutrafol CMO Deena Bahri told ADWEEK.
By moving away from the binary of “before” and “after” and instead focusing on the decision to enact a change, Bahri said the campaign not only empowers consumers to invest in themselves, but also helps to set realistic expectations around hair growth results.
“In a culture that increasingly expects instant results, the traditional before-and-after can sometimes make the journey between those images disappear,” Bahri told ADWEEK. “The visible result matters, but so does helping someone understand what it takes to get there. That combination of aspirational and realistic expectations is important to building trust, particularly in a category where consumers are navigating a lot of claims and quick fixes.”
Launching the “Be An After” campaign during one of television’s biggest nights is meant to build broader awareness of Nutrafol, specifically by providing an emotional entry point into the brand, Bahri said.
In an appearance on Marketing Vanguard in June, Bahri discussed current challenges in the hair health industry, including efforts to move from fear-based to empowerment-driven brand messaging in a space where insecurity marketing used to be the norm. Interestingly, she mentioned casting the “before and after” framing as one of hope and accountability, rather than shame and urgency.
