With its first brand campaign, challenger shampoo brand Hask is focusing on tangled hairy messes rather than lustrous flips.

With an admonishment to “be kind to your hair,” a global campaign created by Toronto’s Good&Ready and running in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia is aimed at establishing Hask as a go-to for nourishing healthy hair.

The creative focuses on the more frustrating aspects of hair care, and the damage we deal with from things like blow dryers, elastics and products.

“Shampoo ads conventionally show great-looking hair but skip over the real life things that damage hair,” says Alan Madill, founder and creative at Good&Ready, which created the campaign. “The women we are trying to reach are not striving to look runway-ready. For them, healthy hair is great hair.”

The campaign assets were created to run on all platforms and in all formats, including in-store down the line, Madill says. In addition to varying lengths of the video, there will also be out-of-home executions and double-page spreads in Allure magazine.

Madill tells strategy the argan oil SKU featured in the ad is a best-seller the brand wanted to showcase most. During COVID, Hask experienced steady growth and it wanted to build on brand awareness as the country emerges from lockdowns.

Hask came to prominence stateside, linked to celebrities such as Angelina Jolie and Anna Kendrick. Parent company Inspired Beauty Brands also manufactures the Jhirmack, HnP, Mane Club and Pure Shine brands.

“The biggest competitor is the OGXs of the world,” Madill explains, a brand Johnson & Johnson acquired in 2016. And according to Madill, the audience is women with all different hair types, as the brand makes products for curly hair, coarse hair and hair of different colours.