The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2022–2026
eos makes body hair the message — 'Evolution of Smooth' wins Iridium Effie twice
A lip-balm brand storms women's shaving by getting real about body hair, turning grooming into a shared joke and category growth.
eos Products
What it had to solve
The women's shaving category was polite, precious and disconnected from real life; competitors outspent eos up to 3-to-1, and the brand famous for lip balm had to beat its own record 2021 while expanding beyond social media.
How it works
eos was known for spherical lip balms, with shaving a small part of its portfolio. The women's shaving category was polite, precious and utterly unhelpful — ads showed women shaving already hairless legs — while real women privately shaved mustaches, bellies, toes and more. Social listening and research exposed the disconnect, and 2020 usage data revealed consumers were already using eos shave cream all over their bodies; the brand responded with R&D to get gynecological approval.
The 'Shaving Skincare for Anyone & Anywhere' work turned that truth into the campaign. Out-of-home ads in New York and Chicago carried lines like 'Your mom has a mustache' and 'Your HR person has hooha hair'; three films contrasted soft-focus, romanticized special occasions with real footage of shaving legs, armpits, upper lips and belly buttons; and 11 TikTok creators took an open brief to shave a body part they would not normally showcase. Even the language got playful — toe toupee for toe hair, treasure trail for the happy trail.
The results were outsized for a challenger outspent up to 3-to-1: 31 million impressions to core Gen Z, a 250%+ awareness lift on TikTok versus goal, 13x clickthrough rate versus goal, and eos driving over half of all shave-category growth in 2022 with +120 basis points of market share. The platform, known as 'Evolution of Smooth' / eos Women's Shave, then won the Iridium Effie at the 2024 and 2025 Global Best of the Best awards — the single most effective marketing campaign in the world two years running.
Why it lands
- It built on a product truth — people were already using eos shave cream everywhere — instead of inventing a category fantasy.
- Honest body hair made a small brand more relatable than incumbents with bigger media budgets.
- Humor made destigmatizing sharable instead of earnest, so the conversation spread on its own.
- The open brief handed authenticity to creators, who chose what to shave and told the story in their own words.
What it did
The campaign delivered 31 million impressions to core Gen Z, a 250%+ awareness lift on TikTok, and eos drove over half of all shave-category growth in 2022 with +120 basis points of share — then the platform won the Iridium Effie in consecutive years as the world's most effective campaign.
What you can take
When category etiquette is the problem, tell the truth people privately live: eos treated body hair as a unifier and a joke, not a flaw, and honesty became the differentiation against bigger rivals.
Since then
The Iridium jury credited the work with doubling penetration and growing market share over time, and Effie's CEO called winning the Iridium twice a rare demonstration of sustained effectiveness. Rivals in the shaving aisle began following eos's honest tone, and eos kept the real-talk platform running with later campaigns, cementing its stretch from lip balm into one of the fastest-growing shave brands in the US.
Sources
- 'Evolution of Smooth' Brand Campaign Wins the Iridium as the Most Effective Campaign in the World
- eos Products and Mischief @ No Fixed Address Win Iridium Effie for Second Consecutive Year at the 2025 Global Best of the Best Effie Awards
- Campaign Trail: Eos normalizes all types of shaving from 'treasure trails' to 'toe toupées'
- eos: Shaving Skincare for Anyone & Anywhere
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