Y&R New Zealand had a wild idea to sell Schick grooming products to bearded hipsters – show them how their untrimmed facial hair looks to others.

And so the Free your Skin campaign is a series of portraits of three men whose beards are, in fact, furry animals clinging to their chins.

Here is the story of how that happened as told by its creators, the team at Electric Art:

“We loved the concept of this brief & knew it had the potential to look amazing. Several test comps were done initially and we settled on a mixture of ferrets for the limbs, face & tail & rabbits for the softer fuller fur of the body.

“The agency street cast an awesome range of hipsters & Troy [Goodall, talent photographer] worked his magic shooting the talent in Auckland. Stephen [Stewart, animal photographer] did a great job shooting the furry critters – matching the portrait lighting & posing the animals to match our rough comps.

“Our menagerie consisted of 6 ferrets and 9 rabbits, all various colours. The rabbits were the best looking of the bunch although the ferrets had all the personality and a rather…unique…smell about them.

A million furry captures later, we had a fantastic bank of material. The rough comp was remade in high res with input from the creatives & Troy. A super challenging deadline was made achievable thanks to an awesome team effort.”

…And here is one of the results:

Creative credits:

Image production: Electric Art

Agency: Y&R New Zealand
Executive creative director: Josh Moore
Associate creative director: Tom Paine
Art director: Mark Tallis
Copywriter: Cam Dowsett

Agency head producer: Christina Hazard
Agency producer: Marique Knight

Talent photography: Troy Goodall
Animal photography: Stephen Stewart