Insight
Shaving was considered a chore reserved only for special occasions or a few days a week since the growth of the beard among Chinese men was slow and not very prominent.
Compared to the wet shavers, young Chinese males considered using electric shavers as more fashionable. Research also showed that women are on top of mind for men. It was important for them to be sexy and attractive to women.
With many celebrity scandal videos being leaked out recently which garnered a lot of eyeballs, Mediacom thought this would be the right way to draw attention among the masses, especially men.
Strategy
What could make men believe that wet shaving is an enjoyable experience and could help them feel sexy and attractive?
To involve women and link it with controversy!
A “scandal video” was leaked out in some video sites which garnered a lot of organic search and discussion on the internet. In this video, a famous Chinese actress, Gao Yuanyuan, in sexy home-wears was seemingly flirting with a secret man by waving a Gillette wet shaver. In order to circulate this video, involve more people and to promote Gillette e-com sales, we arranged appropriate media platforms in different periods and converted the controversial event to an entertainment event successfully. “Scandal Shave” even became a cyber-word ever since.
Execution
When the first “scandal video” was leaked out on Nov 5, several Weibo (one of the most popular SNS in China) KOLs tweeted it and immediately got tens of thousands of retweets. At the same time, over 20 news sites covered this video and circulated it to more people. It thus transformed into an entertainment event.
On Nov 10, the discussion about this video reached a climax. Weibo KOLs and news sites uncovered that the video was a Gillette TVC and released an official “scandal shave” video at the same time. After that, the discussion about “scandal” and “wet shaving” became even hotter on SNS platforms. People became more willing to believe that using a wet shaver could help them be sexy and attractive.
In order to make best use of this event and to drive Gillette sales, the official Weibo accounts of Gillette and Tmall (China’s most used ecommerce site) announced a half-price promotion in Tmall on Nov 11, which was a peak eCom season in China.
Gillette Weibo account also announced that during Nov 11 - Dec 12, Gillette buyers stood a chance to be nominated and interact with Gao Yuanyuan in one of the Gillette off-line activities.
To effectively carry out Gillette Fusion’s “wet shave” Campaign, related hard ads like pre-roll TVC and banners were widely used in Gillette’s official webpage, TV, mainstream portals and i-video. All these channels worked together to reach as many people as possible, especially Gillette Fusion’s target audience.
Results
Scandal Shave has been a great success in both social media and e-shop sales.
In just four weeks, 'Scandal Shave' reached 237 million people, achieved 450,000 interactions, and earned $14m in free media. In terms of sales, the campaign helped sell three 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.
The Gillette Fusion campaign generated 1,300 million impressions Campaign-related Sina Weibo and video were forwarded over 370,000 times. The volume ratio of positive to negative comments of this campaign was 379:1.
The search volume of Gillette had a giant increase and Baidu index, which is used to indicate search volume in detail, was 150% of the average level during this campaign.
On-line sales volume shot up by 6.8 times during this campaign versus the same period last year.