Lips are for kissing. And whether man or woman, lips have a nemesis: Beards. Scratching, stinging beards. As beards are cool and kissing is fun – what can you do? Better protect your lips with Blistex!

We chose a simple and intuitive way to show this: a poster that is at the same time beautiful and painful to look at. We achieved this ambiguity by hammering threatening, pointy nails in a beard-like fashion into it, presented by Blistex.

We transformed our idea into a spectacular framed poster with more than 1500 real nails sticking out of it and casting a spectacular shadow. Like a piece of art, we hung it in a pharmacy’s shop-window. Underneath, we displayed the real product range that could be purchased just inside the shop. Our self-explaining message: “Protect your lips”.

The installation drew much attention to the pharmacy and Blistex sold significantly better. The owner of the pharmacy told us that he was amazed how much impact the simple idea had. The customers could relate to the insight and loved the idea. One of them told us: “It’s a beautiful design. But at the same time it kind of hurts looking at it!”. After this, we considered our mission accomplished.