You’re losing your hair. This harsh reality hit home about a year ago when I noticed I’d managed to reach a dramatic threshold of how my hair had thinned; a point of no return. I was then presented with two options, buy into the hair loss replacement schemes in some desperate effort to cling to scraps; or take control of the situation with a razor. I opted for the latter.
It hadn’t occurred to me until half way through the week that this was going to somehow connect to marketing. In an effort to familiarize us with marketing case-study formats, Kip ran us through a case study of modern day shaving blades, Gillette v Schick (I went all legal on you there). In the tl;dr version of the case (too long; didn’t read) it was evident Gillette had lost major ground on the market thanks to Schick and their marketing prowess. Gillette was seen as the overpriced and overrated brand.
Fast forward past the case analysis and we dove into solutions to turn around Gillette’s floundering position.
“Make ladies razors,” some girl said…
Or maybe she didn’t. It was in the pre-noon hours, which for me exist only as a haze of “almost awake, not quite there”. REGARDLESS, the point is someone made that point as a viable option for Gillette.
My opinion, had my brain not suffered mid-morning brain defects during the actual class, would have been marketing to the bald community. Statistics indicate that roughly half of the male population will suffer some form of hair loss by the time they’re middle-aged. That’s an entirely new target market that Gillette completely overlooks, and it wouldn’t take a retooling of the product to make work.
“Make ladies razors,” some girl said…
Or maybe she didn’t. It was in the pre-noon hours, which for me exist only as a haze of “almost awake, not quite there”. REGARDLESS, the point is someone made that point as a viable option for Gillette.
My opinion, had my brain not suffered mid-morning brain defects during the actual class, would have been marketing to the bald community. Statistics indicate that roughly half of the male population will suffer some form of hair loss by the time they’re middle-aged. That’s an entirely new target market that Gillette completely overlooks, and it wouldn’t take a retooling of the product to make work.
A typical Gillette ad features men using the blade for facial shaving. Looking at Shick’s commercials, they appealed to guys with male pattern baldness by featuring Andre Agassi shaving head.
Shick's commercials appealing to balding men.
Furthermore it would encourage more guys in various stages of hair loss to take the plunge and shave it off which. It seems the hair loss remedy market is one that plays on appealing to male self-esteem. Gillette could radically shatter this notion. In the end, it is more liberating to purge what’s left than cling on to something that doesn’t want to be there.
Hate crimes against the bald community.
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