Results and Effectiveness

Gillette’s most successful campaign ‘Shave Sexy’ reached 197 million people; 198.5% increase on the previous best-in-class launch of Fusion. Furthermore, and drove 200,000 interactions, exceeding Nike’s revered ‘Greatness’ campaign in 2012. Reversed growth of dry shaving category for the first time since 2009 ‘Shave Sexy’ reversed the monthly sales of the dry shavers by -21%. Against their 3 year compound growth rate, this translated to a shortfall equivalent to an entire month’s sales of Philips. Gillette’s highest ever growth ‘Shave Sexy’ tripled the value growth of Gillette in December, representing the highest launch sales month in Gillette’s history in China.

Creative Execution

‘SHAVE SEXY’ SOCIAL MEDIA NATIONAL DEBATE Releasing the video of this ‘unbranded’ experiment through weibo accounts (China’s Twitter) of an ever-popular Japanese AV idol Sora Aoi (rather than Gillette’s staple of athlete endorsers) and target-relevant FHM, ‘Shave Sexy’ became a meme overnight. Then, carefully deployed media buys and dialogue-seeding from key opinion leaders drove men to prolifically tweet about ‘Shave Sexy’, debate it, and even reference it in their everyday conversations. ‘Un-planned’ celebrities soon got involved by posting photos of themselves wet shaving, driving men all over China to do the same, amplifying ‘Shave Sexy’ even more. Within days, ‘Shave Sexy’ was featured on every online news portal, men’s magazines and even blogs. CUE BRANDED CONTENT At the height of activity, an integrated series of ‘branded’ initiatives- from branded messages, online films to targeted banners and on-ground events- were released to drive dry shaver conversion for Gillette.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

‘Shave Sexy’ was a social media driven campaign underpinned by a bold shift to Gillette’s communications strategy in China. The challenge was major category erosion: men in China were no longer able to see past the inconvenience of wet shaving (preparation, shave, wash), driving 18.3 million men annually to switch to more convenient dry shavers (electric). For Gillette this represented US$647.2 million in lost earnings between 06’-12’; we needed to give men a better reason to wet shave. Everything changed when we uncovered a secret about wet shaving: Chinese women find it extremely sexy to watch. ‘Wet shaving makes any man sexy’ they said, demonstrating courage and focus, making her feel ‘beautiful’, ‘taken care of’. THE BIG IDEA: ‘SHAVE SEXY’ Working with psychologists and a pair of identical twin brothers, we created a live social experiment to prove how 40 women found men sexier just by watching them wet shave.