As inventive as he was, even he probably couldn't have thought this one up. Namely, that he sells only 168 units of his invention in the first year of production, but 14 years later the US government alone orders 36 million units. Without a doubt hot shitIt's a great idea that he invented, back then, in the bathroom, where flashes of inspiration often strike, in the shower, or - as in his case - while shaving.
The shop was buzzing. But how! "Unicorn!", one would like to exclaim enthusiastically. In 2004, the turnover was over ten billion dollars with a profit of over two billion, and today almost 30,000 hard-working people work there to achieve a market share of around 70 percent. But he didn't live to see all that.
Too lazy to read? Then listen to me:
In the blogcast, I read this recent blog article to you. With emphasis, of course!
When he, King C. Gillette, passed away in July 1932, his invention was the talk of the town, or rather of at on everyone's lips. His disposable razor was the standard, the electric razor had not yet been invented.
At that time, what needed to be shaved was shaved. J. Walter Thompson, the founder of the world's first advertising agency, did have a beard, as did William Procter, one of the two founders of the professional shaving company. Procter & Gamblewhose company brought professional marketing to the world, has been the owner of Gillette and has recently relaunched the campaign "Gillette - The best a man can get." campaign, which has made it into the headlines, the talk of the town. Now it is "Gillette - The best men can be." and with the campaign's launch film the company says: "Bullying. Harassment. Is this the best a man can get? It's only by challenging ourselves to do more, that we can get closer to our best. To say the right thing, to act the right way. We are taking action. Join us."
Storytelling instead of advertising is the order of the day.
Yes, classic advertising has something of a beard. And not in the sense of a hipster street-credibility beard, but in the original sense of the metaphor: from before-before. That's why hipster street-credibility beards and their colleagues are running around all over the country, clogging up the ears of anyone looking for opportunities with buzzwords like "storytelling", "brand-purpose" and "content strategy" with remarkable frequency and density:
1) sell their products
2) reach as many people as possible with their advertising, and
3) make a big splash with millennials.
For products of the brand Gillette our time is a multiply stupid one right now. On the one hand, as an expression of personal individuality, fewer men's faces and women's knuckles are shaved today than should be the case. On the other hand, innovation in this area is literally never-ending. For if Gillette does not acutely and radically change its innovation model of "expanding the present", the day is not far off when we will have 15 blades in a razor with a heated handle, while a - watch out: scene lingo - Uberamong the razors blows out the blades of the Procter & Gamble blowing out the plane and making a fat stroke through the PowerPoint-slides.
Storytelling is more than price and value, well told.
Young companies like Harry's or Dollar Shave Club have already left their garages with smoking wheel wells and are setting course for those who don't shave today and those who will soon do so again, because, as we know, every fashion is replaced by nothing but its opposite. And sooner or later, hair grows out of every body somewhere that you don't want to see there, wax and tweezers are not always suitable for fighting back, and there's definitely no app for it. Whereas: The beard is app would be a nice claim, wouldn't it?
First and foremost, these young companies are concerned with price, which will backfire in the medium term. However, according to the ondit, the young competition has Gillette meanwhile to reduce their prices by 20 per cent. (Quasi)monopolies undoubtedly have to give way sooner or later, but all the more every brand would do well to enter into a qualified conversation with its audience so that price does not remain the only topic of conversation. This also applies to the new brands, which currently see lower prices as their main argument for success.
In this respect, the decision by Gillette s decision to discover and activate its brand purpose is absolutely right and even necessary for survival. The fact that this can be wonderfully successful and also necessary, important and meaningful in the broader sense has already been demonstrated by the Gillettemother has already shown with her great work #likeagirl for her brand Always for her brand. You can read more about it here.
Brandstory means: This is our point of view.
I think it is fundamentally necessary, important and sensible for companies and brands to care about social issues, just as each and every one of us should, because Erich Kästner already knew: "There is nothing good unless you do it. For those with the reflexive "I alone cannot..." excuse, Margaret Mead has a clever answer: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." After all, companies or brands can do the same. Why not? - In fact, companies are particularly good at it!
Companies and brands claim to be important, supporting parts of society, prosperity and culture in the broadest sense, which I subscribe to with hot ink from a thick pen. However, that requires them to behave in exactly the same way. After all, almost every company has somewhere in its mission statement: "Responsibility, sustainability, harmony with nature and the environment". And you don't have to search around for a long time in mission statements and vision statements until at some point the human being is standing around in the ever-popular centre, do you?
Besides, hardly anyone else really cares seriously. Wouldn't politicians be the shapers and leaders of a country? They would be entrepreneurs in matters of the future, not just state CEOs. For managing, we would have plenty of civil servants. But what do politicians regularly do almost everywhere? Politicians search for market niches with opinion polls so that they can sell a cheap electoral advantage into them as expensively as possible. They have packaging and sales on special offer and confuse that with products. They don't design, they reproduce what they discover in opinion polls. They play hooky from their profession. Many feel called, alone - only a few are chosen. Chosen and chosen are not the same thing.
Companies and brands could and should fill this vacuum. People not only believe they can do this, they even demand it.
Just in time, here are a few figures from the current representative international Edelman Report. Edelman Report. Figures that presumably not only those born in the constellation of the Excel constellation find horny:
53% of respondents agree that brands can do more to address social ills than governments; almost half say brands also have better ideas to do so.
64% say CEOs should initiate positive change, not wait for governments to mandate it.
54% believe it is easier to get brands rather than governments to tackle social improvements.
Or a study by the Julius Raab Foundation from Austria showed: From media use to the labour market, education and training to sustainability, environmental protection, medical care and the financial market, people trust companies with more problem-solving competence than politicians or NGOs.
As developers of new social systems, companies are seen as very or somewhat important by 89%.
Does Brand Purpose pay off?
If you're wondering if this makes business sense, I'll tell you: everything else doesn't. How do I know?
The Meaningful Brand Index has been investigating every year for more than ten years, worldwide and in different markets and industries among 300,000 people, whether brands with meaning perform better economically than those without. Here are three clear answers:
1) Brands with meaning have 137 per cent better KPIs than others.
2) Brands with meaning gain almost ten times more share of wallet than others.
3) Brands with significance have outperformed other brands on the stock market by 206 per cent over the last ten years.
Decide for yourself how useful it is.
Unilever for example, has already decided, and Unilever as we all know, was not invented for hugging trees. There, they recognised that their two brands with meaning -. Dove and Ben & Jerry's - growing twice as fast as the others, and called for a Purpose programme for all brands. Any questions?
Then the best thing to do is ask Laurence D. Fink. The founder and CEO of the world's largest investment fund BlackRock wrote an open letter to the business community almost a year ago. The core message: "Without a sense of purpose, no company, either public or private, can achieve its full potential. ... Society is demanding that companies, both public and private, serve a social purpose..."
I don't assume that Larry Fink has suddenly grown a heart from drinking so much vanilla tea. But who, if not he, knows exactly where and how money will be earned in the future?
And here we come full circle to marketing and to Gillette. It is not (only) about clever advertising campaigns, emotional films and support money for suitable charities. That would not only be too short-sighted, it would not be thought out at all.
This is content marketing in its most comprehensive, purest form. I always tell my clients, "Starting today, you are a content company. Everything you do is content." In the case of Gillette you could shave with some of that content, in the case of Ben & Jerry's you can eat some of the content.
People love content - not just edible content. In the report cited above, 84% of respondents say they want branded content, but find 60% of the content provided worthless. I'm afraid, Gillette is one of them, if you take a look at the website of the current campaign. This campaign lacks the crucial prerequisite for success.
No one knows whether purpose campaigns or movements are successful. This is no different from anything else that is new. But one thing is certain: if you don't fulfil this one condition, then with a lot of luck you'll get, at best, an advertising campaign that is just another one of those that make themselves important with one foot in greenwashing, but in reality have nothing else up their sleeve than to trick their way into the pockets of end consumers on this currently trendy path. One recognises the intention and is disgruntled. And rightly so!
The indisputable prerequisite is: The cause must be authentic. The purpose must really be close to the company's heart, not just an opportunity for communication, and it must fit the brand and the product. I have written more about this here, and here are also six first steps and seven central questions for finding & developing your brand purpose.
The Americans use the beautiful phrase "Put your money where your mouth is." A nice check sentence for all companies that care so much about society that they have to spread that in their advertising. In other words, do you pay your taxes so that the children in the society you care so much about have kindergartens, so that health care works and so that there is money for schools, or do you push your profits through tax loopholes into foreign accounts with the number safe?
Patagonia received a tax bonus last year and didn't pocket the money, but gave it to environmental organisations. A nice gesture, I think. By the way, we are talking about a slim ten million dollars! It could be that there are still some untapped reserves in the authenticity of Gillette's concern, if one takes up the idea of a tweet by the British make-up artist Caroline Hirons:
So it wouldn't be wrong for the people in charge to remember Michael Jackson's wise words Gillette to remember Michael Jackson's wise words the next time they shave:
I'm starting with the man in the mirror /I'm asking him to change his ways /And no message could have been any clearer /If you want to make the world a better place /Take a look at yourself, and then make a change.
When the brave knights with the sharp blades then do what you should do, namely visit their own campaign website, the soup becomes thin and clear. You see, you look down to the bottom of the bowl and realise that when you. Gillette "Join us." but mean "Buy our fucking products". That's a real shame and the opposite of a brand story. This is storytelling of the sappy kind, lathered up and gargled through by means of buzzwords. Worthless and meaningless, misunderstood as a contemporary kind of advertising and experienced as bullshit.
The very best example of how it not of how it can be done was some time ago Pepsi with Kendall Jenner. Why this action has to go down the drain is here.
A concern is a concern, not just a possibility.
The concern of Gillette is great in principle and would be a perfect fit for the brand, with a rich potential of purpose, values, meaning and thus an exemplary ideal case of storysharing that engages and activates its audience and thus can actually make a difference.
Everyone can probably support the fact that the understanding of the role of men and the image they portray, live and experience in our time requires an intensive fundamental revision and that every constructive, positive contribution to this is most welcome.
Entering this playing field as a brand, especially in #metoo times, is courageous and deserves respect. However, the times are over when it was enough to dress up as Robin Hood with emotional commercials in the expectation that one would be rewarded for it. The film as a whole is simply far too bad for that.
The last count of the ratings on YouTubeI saw was that there were about half as many likes as dislikes, and the latter were over a million.
If I were involved in this action, I would slowly start looking at a few options by mid-week at the latest ...
Shared values, shared aspirations - we are all collectively part of a greater whole. Because we don't buy products, we buy what we want to be - sometimes even in such a mundane form as that of a razor.
The too-short-thinkers - or not-thinkers at all - scream storytelling, but mean advertising stunts and don't think about the brand's cause, but mainly about their own, which usually looks like a Golden Lion at the Cannes Advertising Festival.
Regardless of whether it's a global corporation, an SME/small and medium-sized enterprise or a heroic lone fighter as an EPU - every person, every brand, every company has and needs authenticity, nourished by at least one archaic value as the motor for their story, around which everything revolves. If you don't have a magnetic value as a living theme, there is only one other thing left: the price.
So to all those who say, "It doesn't apply to me and my brand!", I would like to recommend the words that my grandmother, old Story Dudette, carved with a blunt razor blade into the old oak tree behind King C. Gillette's house in Massachusetts: "No Story. Gillette's house in Massachusetts: "No Story. No Glory."