“Went to visit my 95-year-old grandfather at the nursing home. Gave him a shave. He cried. Old age is an undignified fucker.” [source: Twitter]

This is a paper about how strategic thinking led to the creation of an entirely new kind of razor - which won Lions for Health and Wellness, including Product Design in 2017.

Gillette has always been the home of high-performance design. But they had found in a changing market, they needed to build more than functional superiority.

We set out to build more emotional value into Gillette. The father-son relationship was identified as the emotional territory: shaving is a rite of passage passed down from father to son, and an appropriate space for Gillette to speak to.

But then, a collaborative insight generation process between Gillette Marketing, Gillette Product Development and agency led to something much more fundamental - a whole new strategic opportunity in product.

It was an insight never before identified by the shaving market, emotionally powerful and further, with growing commercial opportunity. One that took us beyond the father-son startpoint and into a whole new territory.

In social listening and face-to-face, we discovered a heartbreaking new moment: when a child becomes caregiver for their parent.

The relationships reverse: parent-caring-for-child becomes child-caring-for-parent.

The roles of a lifetime collapse. Small things become big things, heavy with emotion - helping put on socks or unfastening a too-tight watch strap.

We saw three things:

1. Shaving becomes dignity: a clean shave is a way to maintain independence and social position.

2. When Dads deserved the best, they were getting the worst. In their new role as caregivers, sons tried to shave their ageing fathers – but even when they spent 30 minutes carefully shaving, were causing frustration, harm, and ultimately a poor shave.

3. The 2nd reversal - the razors were failing them: razors are designed to be 1st person - precision goes into every curve, made to be held by your own hand, held inwards. Our strategic flip was a literal one - to turn the razor around for ‘3rd person’ use.

We took this to Gillette’s Head of Design:

“There have been more than 4000 razors designed to shave yourself.?There have been no razors designed to shave another person”.

Within 24 hours had our first render of a 3rd person razor: Gillette TREO, the world’s first assisted shaving razor.

TREO has been designed the other way around, to be a ‘3rd person’ razor, used by caregivers. It has an outward-facing divot, to be held like a paintbrush for easier use and greater control, rather than using the traditional stick handle. It has a single, high-quality blade that can be easily disposed of after each shave, designed to work with little or no water for less mess. And it has an inbuilt skin-prep gel, designed to be easy to use on sensitive and older skin, so caregivers can shave without having to worry about moving someone to running water.

TREO has been designed so caregivers can rest easy knowing they are giving the best at this critical time.

There is a clear business case, alongside the vital human one, for this underserved market:

- UK > 6.5 million caregivers. USA > 43.5 million.

- Global population growth over 60s: 3% per year (UN) – the fastest age group.

Our trial has shown it will benefit caregivers and cared-for of all kinds – not only the father-sons that first gave us the insight. It’s generation and gender-agnostic: parents for disabled children, spouses for war-veterans and loved ones disabled in car crashes - Fast Company called it “a masterpiece of inclusive design”.

Gillette is launching TREO as we speak. We have been through a process of validation, test-launch and production (see the confidential section).

In TREO 2018 was named one of Time Magazine’s Products of the Year

Gillette was founded on making shaving more accessible to men shaving themselves. Now, we are making it accessible to anyone who needs assistance.

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