Gillette Mach 3: To shave Or Not

Credits:

Type of Entry: Use of Mixed Media
Category: Use of Mixed Media
Title: TO SHAVE OR NOT
Advertiser/Client: GILLETTE PROCTER & GAMBLE
Product/Service: GILLETTE MACH 3
Entrant Company: MEDIACOM MEDIA INDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Media Agency: MEDIACOM MEDIA INDIA Mumbai, INDIA
Creative Credits
Name Company Position
Nihar Das Mediacom
Anupama Biswas Mediacom
Prasanna Kumar Mediacom Group Head
Pinaki Dutt Mediacom Director
Neelkamal Sharma Mediacom
Alka Pillai Mediacom Senior Business Director
Mandir Tendolkar Mediacom
Harsha Joshi Mediacom
Sumeet Vohra Procter And Gamble India Marketing Director
Archana Aggarwal Procter And Gamble India Country Media Manager
Divya Gururaj Mediacom Managing Director
Senior Business Director
Details
Results and Effectiveness:
A record sales increase of 38%. Awareness doubled! Trial increased by 400%! Market share increased by 35%. And 12.2 million Indians voted for a clean shave. “The program has been a very innovative, business building program that has had impact on brand equity and trial. An inspiring combination of educating and entertaining the consumer. This program has helped Gillette achieve leadership in the blades segment”. - Sumeet Vohra, Marketing Director, P&G India “Well done. Great idea and excellent execution. Clearly a big driver of the record Mach3 share”. -Shantanu Khoshla, Managing Director, P&G India
Creative Execution:
First, we piqued the nation’s interest by commissioning the first ever Nielsen survey on the country’s attitudes to shaving. Research highlighted a series of controversial points. Were clean-shaven men more successful? Did the nation prefer clean-shaven celebrities? And the big one: did women prefer clean-shaven men? The provocative results created immediate interest and hit primetime news. As expected, people were ready with their point of view! And the Great Indian Shaving Debate was on. For 8 weeks, leading TV news and radio stations ran celebrity interviews, panel discussions and news stories. Newspapers and men’s magazines carried editorial features and reader polls. In a PR event, Bollywood stars shaved off their famous stubbles in front of the media. Live polling conducted in malls, gyms, cinemas and offices kept the debate raging, and offered men a chance to trial the product. All media directed people to www.toshaveornot.com to cast their vote.
Insights, Strategy and the Idea:
The Indian man’s traditional shaving device, the double-edged razor, could not be dislodged by newer and better shaving systems like the Gillette Mach3. The Gillette Mach3 is 10 times more expensive, and, despite being able to afford it, Indian men did not consider shaving to be a significant enough activity to justify such a premium. As a result, after a decade of presence in India, Gillette Mach3’s trials and sales were flat. For men to rationalize the price premium and switch to the Mach3, the real challenge lay in combating men’s inertia and indifference to shaving. Our insight was that we needed to spark a national debate, recognizing Indian men’s love for voicing their opinions on everything. We needed to get shaving out of the bathroom and into the living-room, chat-rooms and conversations. We developed a platform for the campaign: “India Votes… to shave or not”.