You know the saying, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". Well, I sit writing this as our new TV ad for the Azor, Shaveolution (Bend the Rules) has debuted online here, here, here and here.
Tomorrow, Flight 1 of our TV ad campaign kicks off, 8.53pm UK time on Sky Sports (during the Champions League half time slot) and then rolls extensively across Sky, ITV 2, ITV 4, Dave & Dave Ja Vu.
This £1m+ above the line promotion ties in with extensive retailer promotions for the Azor, which started last week at Sainsbury's across the UK. By the end of the first week of this promotion with this single retailer, we expect to have sold more Azors (and importantly, more replacement cartridges) than all retailers together in the previous weeks.
So, is it 'Gamer over' for Fusion (Gamer is Gillette's latest 'name' for its Fusion 5 blade razor). Well, as I have blogged repeatedly over the past 15 months, it is our intention to genuinely disrupt & game change the system razor market, firstly in the UK, then
Here at King of Shaves, we're committed to giving men a genuine performance alternative to 'Wilkinette' - a choice that allows them to 'choose different & shave better' - and ultimately, shave closer, longer, for less.
We're picking up the pace in this race for shaving's thought (and product) leadership and I for one am really looking forward to the next few months! Many thanks to the King of Shaves Smarketing team led by Tim Wright, ably assisted by Jenny Pitt and the talented smarketers working alongside them, from our ad agency, Hooper Galton to media & PR specialists Brian Maclaurin Associates & The Communications Store.
As the ad soundtrack says, "We're striking out in a different direction..." And I, for one, hope to have you with us on the next phase of our journey for King of Shaves - the future of shaving!
King of Shaves Poised To Unleash A Perfect Storm For The Azor System Razor. (original blog posting)
After months of planning, tomorrow sees us unleash three months of sustained advertising and trade promotion for our Azor system razor.
Tomorrow, both the Azor AND replacement cartridges (4 & 8 pack) are HALF PRICE at Sainsbury's across the UK, with all other major retailers including Asda, Boots, Morrison's, Superdrug, Tesco & Wilkinson's following suit in short order. Please note - our cartridges are HALF PRICE - something neither Gillette nor Wilkinson Sword have ever done, or likely will dare, do. Reason being is the massive profit margin in cartridges like Gillette Fusion Power (94%) funds Gillette's huge ad-spend and other marketing activities, including keeping 3 highly paid sportsmen on their payroll.
We're
aiming to make our Azor system handle the Number 1 selling system razor
handle by the year end - at just £2.44, it'll be great value (far
better value than the 'overpriced at half price Gillette Fusion Gamer
handle for example) and even better, with our replacement blades,
you'll be able to get the King of Shaves at a fraction of Gillette's
ransom.
To bring our great brand to the millions of men who are yet to experience the King of Shaves, on 29th September - this time next Tuesday - our TV advertisement makes its debut on Sky Sports, and then rolls onto other Sky channels as well as ITV 2, ITV4, Dave & Dave Ja Vu. We have over 400 slots lined up, starting off with the Champion's League games next week - we'll be in London to celebrate the ad's debut at a secret location - so looking forward to that.
The
King of Shaves Azor is now in 90% (approximate) distribution across all
major retailers in the UK - so should be easily available for you to
buy, although when news of our promotion hits websites like Martyn
Lewis' 'MoneySavingExpert.com' -
well - who knows what will happen - everyone loves a bargain, and we've
been building up our stocks for weeks, in order that we won't
(hopefully) go out of stock.
This is an incredibly exciting time for the team and I at King of Shaves, a huge amount of hard work has gone into integrating our £1m above the line TV spend with a very substantial offer for the consumer to get you trialling our Azor, and converting to it - the next three months or so are going to be hugely exciting for us as we unleash our 'Perfect Storm' of Great Product, Great Performance & Great Price into the UK market.
Again, we're on promotion at all Sainsbury's across the UK tomorrow - half price on King of Shaves Azor AND King of Shaves replacement cartridges (4's & 8's).
We're evolving shaving, for better, FOREVER.
A couple of weeks back, I was lucky enough to be invited for a few days sailing aboard the beautiful Oyster 72, Stravaig of Argyll by my friend Scott.
I took an Azor S along with me, and after we'd finished sailing (and supping a lovely glass or three of sauvignon), I went swimming in the beautiful azure sea with a snorkel and the new Azor S. To the left is the lovely pic Scott took of the Azor with his swish underwater camera (ideal for sea water shaving yachtsmen, our Azor floats by the way - unlike our competitors) and below to the right, a somewhat less attractive one of me, attempting to shave with it, along with our new King of Shaves MicroGel (it's on the launch glidepath...)
It was great fun! As you can see (that's enough S's for now). Oh, ok - one more. Shaveolution is coming.
I met Andrew Goulbourn, Sales & Marketing Director for Ipswich Town Football Club last year, at a dinner hosted by John Ayling of our media buying company, John Ayling & Associates (Andrew worked with John back in the day) and was delighted to speak at a breakfast event for 85 of East Anglia's business people this morning on A) how we're growing King of Shaves against our big spending premier league competitors, where 'money is no object' and what it takes (in my opinion) to be successful in business, by employing my S.P.A.C.E strategy (for more details on this, do buy my book - How to build a great business in tough times, the King of Shaves story.
The enthusiasm and talent in the room was palpable, from Alex & Naomi Tarry, the founders of Best of Suffolk, a fast growing, luxury & self catering holiday company operating online, to Sean Mitchell of Ocean Telecom, Peter Osbourne, General Manager of Ramada Encore (where I stayed the night - very pleasant!), Paddy Bishop of Paddy & Scott's Coffee Roastery (cracking blend) and Kate Bowden Smith of Pier Marketing. Kate also kindly forwarded us details of a press enquiry regarding men's grooming - thanks Kate!
These are all great businesses, worthy of your support and I was delighted to hopefully inspire them to believe that 'by being the best you can be' is the only way to genuinely grow your business, be it in product or service.
And, here's to Roy Keane lifting Ipswich town from their current position, to challenge for the play-offs for the Premiership next May. Roy, if you want a bit of inspiration and 'how to challenge the big dogs', and win - get in touch ;-)
As exclusively revealed in the Mail on Sunday today, we've enlisted Charles Darwin and a Chimpanzee to launch our fast growing King of Shaves Azor system razor in the UK to the millions of men who are yet to experience our "Shaveolution" - a razor which employs Bendology Technology to deliver a close, comfortable shave without you having to pay a "King's Ransom" for replacement blades.
The ad will debut online here on Tuesday 29th September, and will then air on TV across Sky TV channels (including Sky Sports), ITV 2, ITV 4, Dave & Dave Ja Vu. To be alerted to when the ad will go live, sign up and follow us on Twitter here.
Created by London advertising agency, Hooper Galton, directed by Stockholm based directors againstallodds and produced by Passion Pictures (Meerkats, Sony Play Doh), the ad is a million miles (or more) away from the hackneyed, cheesy, ads often deployed by US owned razor brands to sell their razors, whose blades can cost up to £2.50 per replacement cartridge (the cost of an Azor cartridge is £1.25, or less). Matt Lester's soundtrack to the ad, 'Lust & Charm' is also expected to chart when released, and is to feature in a separate 'Shaveolution' campaign with online music streaming start-up, Spotify.
This campaign marks the end of a remarkable year for King of Shaves, which has won a number of prestigious awards for its growth & corporate strategy, awards for its shaving products (including from FHM, Shortlist and in the USA, top-selling 'Allure' magazine), has seen the company be 'demerged' from the parent company I founded in 1993, KMI, with an inward investment of £4m, raise c£1m via its innovative 'Shaving Bond' issue, see the publication of King's book "How to build a great business in tough times - the King of Shaves story" and see me win through to the finals of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2009 Awards, to be awarded on 6th October at a central London hotel.
Phew!
Next month, King of Shaves Azor launches in South Africa with the 700 strong 'Clicks' health, beauty & pharmacy chain, and in November, the Azor launches in Australia. These market launches are on top of Japan and Brazil, which happened earlier in the year.
The company has already introduced a new variant of the Azor - the Azor S - which is specifically designed to help men with sensitive skin shave in more comfort, and has plenty of new products coming in 2010.
With retail sales nearing £30m, it is my ambition that investment into TV and on-line advertising from 29th September will drive sales towards the £50m, then £100m mark over the next few years, as the company gears up to genuinely compete with competitors Gillette & Schick Wilkinson-Sword on a global stage.
Who better to enlist to help us evolve shaving for the better, than Charles Darwin and a Chimpanzee - all will be revealed!
For a couple of hours yesterday, I had the pleasure of A) a great lunch at Home House, the private member's club in Portman Square London, and B) the pleasure of the company of some of the UK's top marketing minds, in a "lunchtime discussion" about what 'Digital means to "Marketing', chaired by Marketing Week's editor, Mark Choueke.
There were some heavyweight types there - the heads of marketing at Ford & Barclaycard, the Guardian, Unilever (VP Global Comms), Alex Batchelor (Chairman of The Marketing Society, ex Royal Mail) and more - UK heads of business units from Google, journalists from Marketing Week. No agencies were present. I was the sole CEO/Founder/Brand Owner of an FMCG brand. The thrust of the 2 hour discussion over lunch went something like this:
"What does digital mean to marketing in the 21st century (ie, how relevant are we, is what we're doing right, and if it's not, what should we do? What's going on?"
and
"Can (traditional, conventional) agencies (media & creative) be relevant (ie make money) out of digital - note this has been a challenge for media owners - ie NewsCorp, content owners (ie YouTube) and ad agencies (Banner ads? How creatively demeaning! Skyscrapers? You want your ad on YouTube? Urrgghh).
Now, this was quite an interesting lunch for me. Firstly, I'd just finished judging around 50 awards for the 2009 BIMA's - more on this after the Awards are presented - we have a final meeting to vote for the winners shortly). Secondly, I've absolutely (& personally) lived, breathed, embraced, leveraged, globalised, King of Shaves' presence 'ONline' since 1995. Firstly, through buying shave.com. Secondly, since signing up to eBay, YouTube, Amazon - when people still thought the latter was a long South American river. And since 2001, blogging (although it wasn't called that then) about what we're doing with King of Shaves as a brand, attempting to enter into an ONline dialogue with our consumers (as blogging was free, and was globally available, this seemed to make great sense to me). Finally, and more recently, I discovered a start-up called Obvious Corporation in 2006, which owned something called 'Twitter' and now, personally, write a couple of blogs here & here, tweet here and generally (try) to 'keep on top of stuff'.
Simply put, what we come across like online is 99.5% down to me. Because, I'm the person who does it...
So, what was the upshot of the discussion?
Well, it was like this.
Confusion, "unsured-ness" reigned. Digital was viewed as 'difficult', 'disruptive', 'disintermediating', potentially damaging and most importantly, from a (traditional) marketing (& traditional agency) perspective, a real threat. Why? Well, it's because in the old days, 'Marketers made speeches to their grateful buying public via things called TV commercials' and now, people simply aren't eyeballing the TV screen, or if they are, they aren't really bothered about the message (unless it's ground-breakingly, fabulously, funny, creative, thought-provoking or challenging). Most of (today's) commercials, simply put, aren't.
Sure, we like to believe Barack Obama when he says "Change, we CAN". People like leadership, they like reassurance, they like believable rhetoric and they love a well delivered, passionate and well timed speech. There is still a space for a Great TV commercial. But, and this is a big BUT, they like even more is having a conversation via the internet - not being addressed by it. People love talking to other people. Why do you think Vodafone, O2, Telefonica, Verizon, Orange - are worth so much money. Witness the explosive growth of facebook (social networking), twitter (sharing with people what you're up to) and shortly - community - stuff like collaboration & sharing (playlists being one example).
So, 'old school' brands are struggling to cope with engaging in the ONline digital conversation. Why? Well, look at the way I've written ONline. I presume 'online' means the fact that the computer is on a line (to somewhere else). A bit of an anachronism, as most stuff these days is wireless. But, anyway. I emphases the ON because the WWW, the world-wide-web, the internet, the 'consumer cloud' never sleeps. It's "Always ON". In the old days, the TV would be turned off at night, after News at Ten, and that'd be that - until you'd get your Sun through the letterbox the next day.
No longer. Now, conversations are happening 247365.25. And, if you're not participating in them (as a brand) then you're not contributing. Well, that's the way i see it anyway. The days are gone where Coke said "Drink me - I'm the real thing", where Gillette said "Trust me, I'm the best a man can get", where McDonalds said "You're Loving It" and Microsoft said "Where do you want to go today - we'll take you there".
Look at the confidence of today's internet savvy brands, who know how to hold conversations with consumers. Ever see Google advertise? Apple? Twitter? eBay? Skype? Surely, these are prime candidates to sponsor the Olympic Games, given their bottom lines and revenues. But, you know what, they don't need to - they don't have to. They're "simply there" helping consumers on a day by day basis.
Because "we're all talking now" the control of the conversation - sorry speech - by brands, to consumers has been lost, probably forever. Some brands "get this" (I'd like to think we do - for example, Gillette Global (a $57Bn dollar business) have just 42 followers (18.09.09) on Twitter, and are following, amongst others, companies they own (duh!). King of Shaves has 2,400 (18.09.09) followers - and growing strongly - and this is a shaving brand, remember!
So, if you're a marketeer used to making speeches to consumers about how great your brand is, and why it should be bought - guy (or gal), your days are numbered.
However, if you're a marketeer determined to contribute (creatively) to the conversation - to offer out, and take back, and to help people access your brand, product, or service, then hey - you know what - it's a whole new world for you - a world the ad agencies (on the whole) are yet to get to grips with, and because of that, anything, anything at all is possible.
Live at the heart of the online hurricane. Hold conversations with consumers. Make them amazed with your genuine insight. Make them laugh with your creativity. Help them help themselves. Don't tell them what to do.
The past was a different place. They did things differently there. Knowledge is King. Creativity Is Paramount. Share it, and make people laugh :-)
