Learn how two different marketing videos in the razor market greatly impacted bottom-line sales.
Marketing is pervasive these days. It’s hidden in movies, Instagram posts...even your travel. I mean, do you really think your flight attendant simply decided to promote 50,000 free miles if you sign up for their credit card on the spot?
We can all agree that marketing can be so good that we forget it’s marketing. But can one marketing campaign really impact the bottom line? Absolutely. We’ll look at two YouTube videos that went viral and what it meant for their bottom line.
Let’s just get the bad one out of the way. Gillette's, ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’, video that launched during the ‘me too’ movement had marketers scratching their heads everywhere. This launched during a time that humans were regularly surprised by hearing from their favorite celeb or influencer that they, too, were a victim of sexual harassment.
As a fellow marketer, I badly wanted to like Gillette’s ‘We Believe’ video, but it just didn’t seem fair that good guys were grouped with the a-holes of the world. Gillette was taking a risk with their tone that was quick to blame all men. While the video was meant to inspire, it focused too long on all the terrible traits that some men choose to abuse. The video missed the inspirational mark.
And that’s not just me saying that. It’s the 10:1 ratio of negative comments on their YouTube channel. It’s the loss of Gillette sales during that fiscal quarter.
Joe Rogan, a comedian and actor, responded to the video explaining that “No one wants to be lectured to.”
But, Gillette took a chance. Maybe it really was brand building or social responsibility or support that killed it. Most likely, it was all three. Unfortunately, the music and voice over carried a sad undertone throughout the ad, leaving many males feeling offended.
Not only offended, but Gillette consumers also chose to take their business elsewhere. That earnings quarter resulted in an $8 billion dollar loss. And you can only imagine how uncomfortable internal business discussions felt during their quarterly review.
Of course, we don’t know the long game. Maybe Millennials and Gen Z’ers will revive the brand. But we do know that Gillette can say that their video went viral with over 31.5 million views in less than a year. And you know what they say, no news is bad news.
Now for the palette cleanser.
Video marketing has its own set of best practices for creating good videos. But Dollar Shave Club chose everything not to do in video best practices, including the use of cuss words, brazen insults, and a nonsense storyline.
And they did it really well.
Michael Dubin, CEO of Dollar Shave Club, put his improv acting skills to good use. Dubin hired his friend/comedian/director, Lucia Aniello, to create a quick video breaking all the rules. And boy, did it pay off.
Dubin’s use of humor to position f***ing great razors (in a world led by Gillette) that cost $1, somehow made you want to share this video with all of your friends. It’s so nonsensical that you have to watch the video multiple times. And each time, you learn one more benefit, like the razor’s pivot head, coupled with complete absurdity.
This epic video resulted in 12,000 new orders within the first 48 hours.
In fact, the traffic attracted by the video crashed the company’s server in the first hour. It became the very definition of a viral marketing video. Over six years later this video has more than 26.5 million views, Dollar Shave Club has been acquired by Unilever, and claimed nearly 50% of the razor market.
Dollar Shave Club disrupted a $2.8 billion dollar market while rewriting marketing handbooks. It was a high risk that came with a high reward.
Your marketing is not background music. It’s why big brand companies don’t normally make bold campaigns built on sensitive topics. It’s also why start-ups are becoming more brazen to get noticed so they don’t drown in the busy market.
While you can create marketing content that flies under the radar, do you really want to? Because sometimes it pays off.
Please heart my blog or leave a comment if you liked it. Be sure to check out my next blog tackling the big question if chatbot marketing is ethical!
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