Our challenge was to find a way to encourage men to spend more time and money on something the category Goliath – Gillette – had told them for years was an exercise in speed and efficiency.

Our insight was that in juggling their many responsibilities, men have lost time for themselves – shaving being a prime example. Shaving was once a time-honoured cornerstone of male grooming (not a soulless, slave-to-efficiency activity). And with The Art of Shaving, we set out to make it such once again.The creative strategy was to bring some romance and exclusivity to this kind of shaving, by creating a fictitious 'Brotherhood' of shavers – bound by their values, beliefs and approach to the shave. These executions focused on illuminating the stories of a selection of 'members' of the Brotherhood, each of which weaved an entertaining and engaging plotline around their use of The Art of Shaving’s product regimen.

The creative strategy was to bring some romance and exclusivity to this kind of shaving, by creating a fictitious “Brotherhood” of shavers – bound by their values, beliefs and approach to the shave. These executions specifically focused on illuminating the stories of a selection of “members” of the Brotherhood, each of which weaved an entertaining and engaging plotline around their use of The Art of Shaving’s product regimen.The channel strategy was two-fold: we located the longer-form executions (our three short films, plus three :30 teasers thereof) in dwell-time media – both online (Facebook, YouTube and theartofshaving.com) and off-line (in NYC and Chicago yellow cab videos), and used high-impact, highly targeted traditional print and outdoor media to both drive broad awareness of the campaign and to encourage viewership of the videos. All advertising included online calls-to-action and contained QR codes, which took consumers to the videos via a mobile application.

The campaign was successful in building brand awareness and brand attributes, and had a direct impact on both retail and online sales. With the significant portion of media dollars spent in November and December, the campaign is credited with a 9% lift in sales, and an increase of over 12% in site traffic. During that time, the brand posted record daily sales figures during the “cyber Monday” retail event and saw its Facebook fanbase nearly tripled. Through iMedia, QR codes linking to the films and a Facebook promotion, the three videos received over 69,000 views.