The Brief

Our challenge was clear: how could we reframe Gillette's promise to overcome wet shaving's inherent inconvenience, writing a new chapter of growth for the brand? The breakthrough happened when we spoke to the girlfriends and wives of wet shavers. As they described their partner's shaving habits- we noticed their eyes light up, and their voices drop. We realized we had uncovered a forbidden secret about Chinese women: the act of wet shaving was an arousing experience to watch. 'Wet shaving makes any man sexy' they said, demonstrating courage, focus, and most importantly manliness; making her feel 'beautiful' and 'cared for'.

Creative Execution

'Scandal Shave' was a campaign of many organizational firsts:Unbranded Diffusion- to enhance peer discourse, much of the campaign was unbranded,deployed organically or through partnerships with target-relevant platforms. Only at the height of interaction did Gillette 'join in'.Entertainment News Marketing- rather than traditional media, 'Scandal Shave' focused on driving earned coverage from entertainment news and celebrities; so as to foster credibility, socialmedia buzz and nation-wide interest.Taboo Content- acknowledging our target's preference for taboo, 'Scandal Shave' centred on a risqué piece of content, with great effort applied to preserve its authenticity. A huge leap for P&G

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Acknowledging our target's preference for taboo, extensive effort was applied to preserve the authenticity of the 'private video'. Not only was the clip sent to weibo users via unmarked DVDs,once it surfaced online it was aided by a stream of 'unbranded' and carefully deployed editorial,opinion-leader involvement and dialogue seeding from celebrities on popular social networking sites like weixin and weibo; all of which helped the topic gain interest nation-wide as well asextensive coverage across radio programmes, magazines, blogs and national news.

Results

In just 4 weeks, 'Scandal Shave' reached 237 million people, achieved 450,000 interactions, and earned US$14 million in free media. In terms of sales, the campaign helped sell 3 million razors, recording the brand's highest launch sales month in its history in China. Also, the campaign reversed the monthly sales of dry shaving category by 43%, representing a shortfall of 260,000 units; equivalent to an entire month's sales of market leaders Philips and Flyco. All the above were achieved without any changes in price/ distribution, and with just 10% of the average monthly media spend of the dry shaving category.