53 posts tagged “gillette”
King of Shaves Azor continues to grow in the face of huge competition from 'Wilkinette'. According to sales numbers we received yesterday (and this is before our integrated TV advertising & trade promotions kicked off early October) here are the highlights:
- King of Shaves Azor handle sales up 309% year on year (to w/e Oct 3rd 2009)
- King of Shaves Azor Endurium replacement cartridges up 1,339% year on year (to w/e Oct 3rd 2009)
- King of Shaves Azor the #5 selling system razor handle by volume (outselling all individual Wilkinson Sword variants, as well as Gillette Mach3 Turbo, Gillette Fusion Power Stealth, Gillettte Fusion Power Phenom & Gillette Fusion Power Gamer).
- Aggressive price promotions by Gillette drove handle sales at the expense of handle cost, the average Gillette system handle (including all power variants) at just £4 (versus RRP's of up to £9.99)
- All Wilkinson Sword products in month-on-month sales decline.
Looking forward to reporting our October sales figures - where our handle market share could easily hit 17% by volume.
Awesome King of Shaves Azor Sales in UK. (original blog post)
In the past four weeks, in the UK alone, we've sold a simply stunning 107,000+ Azor system razor handles and an even more unbelievable 602,000+ Azor Endurium cartridges. With each Azor cartridge delivering 3-4 weeks of high performance use, that's over 2,000,000 weeks of King of Shaving.
Words fail me. Many, many thanks to everybody who's turned from 'the Dark side' and have seen the light, who 'get' our ecoptimised, high performance razor with its 'Bendology Technology' and who are shaving closer, longer, for less - and with style too.
King of Shaves Azor also shortlisted for Shortlist Magazine's 2010 Men's Grooming Award for Best Razor - we won 'Best New Shaving Product' last year - will we manage the accolade of 'Top Razor' as we turn our faces towards 2010.
King of Shaves - Truly the Future of Shaving.
So, the 'blade wars' start to ramp up. I spotted that Superdrug today now have old style Wilkinson Sword (Schick) Quattro cartridges (not Titanium) at 20p off. Oooh, that's a big shaving, not. Plus, they've also taken £2 off the cost of their manual Quattro razors (still more expensive than Azor at full price) and £3 off their hedge-trimmer razor (sorry, 'Titanium Precision) - also more expensive. Plus, they've brought their 'Mo'vember promotion forward...into October. Bit kneejerk, but as it's for charity, well - I'm not criticising this (we partnered with Movember in Australia a few years back).
In addition to Asda slashing up to £3.30 off Glllette Fusion & Mach3 cartridges, Tesco and Boots have only the sort of (Costco buy in bulk) promotion that P&G could think of, where you have to spend nearly £20 for 13 Fusion blades, saving you £11 off the already over-priced high price. With the average supermarket basket shop being about £80, Gillette are asking you to part with nearly 25% of this, to try and lock men into overpriced Fusion cartridges.
From a retailer perspective, given they specialise in FMCG - Fast Moving Consumer Goods - well, I can't believe they'll be over the moon about this when the promotion ends. The FSDU's I saw over the weekend were rammed full with product (we were pretty low on stocks in most retailers) as even at this 'bargain' price, our Azor (when it goes back to 'fair at full price' in a few weeks will still be LESS than Gillette's deal. Enter SMCG's (Slow Moving Consumer Goods). Ouch.
Plus, you won't have to drop nearly £20 to enjoy the months of King of Shaves shaving with our Award Winning razor, the Azor.
Interesting times - watch this space - and again, HUGE uplifts for King of Shaves Azor over the weekend, more great reviews for Azor at dooyoo.co.uk and our TV commercial Shaveolution (Bend the Rules) featuring our very own Elvis Stubbles is giving 'Wilkinette' troubles. People asking after Mat Le Star's soundtrack 'Lust and Charm' too - available on Soundcloud, downloadable MP3 coming soon I suspect.
We're a week into our integrated above/below the line Azor awareness strategy with retailers, and are on massive uplift. Our TV ad debuted successfully on Tuesday, and is getting 99% great reviews (some people don't like it, but I guess you can't please all the people all the time).
What has happened is for the first time, Gillette have gone into what I'll call 'heavy promotion mode' with Fusion, as evidenced by a value pack we've just spotted in Tesco, selling a Fusion Manual & 13 cartridges for £19.99. Versus our Azor 3 up at £2.44 & 4 cartridge pack at £2.88, ie £11.52 for 15 cartridges & handle. This is, to my knowledge, the first time ever, in the world, that Gillette have been forced to discount their cartridge price. I love the fact that we've
I've blogged the following phrase before - King of Shaves is 'fair price at full price' and Gillette Fusion is 'over-priced at half price'.
We're now on promotion at Tesco as well as Sainsbury's, Morrison's, Wilko's and will shortly be on promotion with both Asda and Boots.
If you're a guy, and you shave, then October is a great time to check out the King of Shaves! Choose different, shave better, save money!
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!
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 :-)
It's quiet. I can see blue sky when I look up straight up, and my world is eerily calm. But everywhere around me, a storm is raging. Competitor brands which were once viewed as impossible to uproot, disrupt are having their strategies questioned, the instant world we live in is only accelerating the windstrength of change and the only thing that is constant is 'Change is happening Faster'.
My team and I are living in the eye of a brand Hurricane.
Since launching King of Shaves back in 1993, with a single shaving oil sold at Harrods in London, King of Shaves products are now sold internationally, on an ever increasing basis. Our retail sales have increased 40,000% from our first year sales of just £500 in year 1, and our growth shows no sign of abating. Indeed, by the end of next year, our 17 year growth should be 72,000% up on our first year.
How has this happened, in a market that isn't growing in size, with competitors worth billions of dollars?
It's the power of a Hurricane brand. One that changes the rules of the game, one that continually Zags and one that continually reinvents itself to be better, but without an increase in cost to the consumer. King of Shaves, in my mind, is now a Category 2 Hurricane, and increasing in force. Since launching our Azor 'hybrid synergy' system razor last year, we've got nigh on 10% handle market share, and sales of replacement cartridges have jumped from just 2,500 per week to nigh on 50,000 per week.
And this is before we unleash an integrated awareness assault in the UK, to show consumers that not only is King of Shaves changing the face of shaving for better, forever, but the brands it competes with are becoming increasingly out of touch with their consumers, despite spending tens of million of pounds to protest their relevance.
Gillette are currently running press advertisements proclaiming (in essence) that the Mach3 is no longer a good razor, that their Fusion is so much better (yet fail to point out the cost or replacement blade cartridges is twice as much) whilst Wilkinson Sword, having launched their combined razor/trimmer product, are finding it is having little impact on increasing the all important replacement blade sales. Plus, the fact that almost since launch, it's been sold on deal, at half price, in the same way that Gillette have resorted to selling their Fusion range at half price.
Could you imagine Apple running an ad saying "look, this (old) Mac is no good, buy our (twice as expensive) new one?" No way. Yet, because sales of Mach3 cartridges are resurgent, as consumers get the fact they don't have to use an over-bladed, over-packaged, battery powered expensive razor to get a great shave, then Gillette have to do something. Spend money on a bit of brand in-fighting... Duh.
Meanwhile, in the eye of the hurricane at King of Shaves, I watch what's going around me with no small amount of 'shock & awe'. We HAVE to be getting our market share from somewhere with our Azor, because no way are men shaving more, in fact, they're shaving less, with the advent of increased informality at work, and the growth in trimmed beards - goatees and the like. We have our competitors applying their high performance system razor handles to disposables (the Quattro disposable for example) which is thrown away after use - so wasteful, and we have Bic, which should be thriving in a recession, going backwards as people eschew disposable (landfill) razors despite them costing less.
Our Azor, which is shortly to be joined by the Azor S - the first ever razor optimised for sensitive skin (courtesy of it's unique Bendology Technology reflex hinge - is going great guns, being adopted by Generation Now as opposed to Generation Then, and the look, feel, style, design - the 'DNA' of the Azor is winning people over, young and old, richer or poorer - in the same way iPod and iPhone have.
Plus, we have more 'Same, but Better' (read my King of Shaves book on this) coming.
The internet, and the instant interactiveness of it, is clearly fuelling our growth, without 'trying' our followers on Twitter are over 1,000 now (Gillette have just 32 as of 08/09/09) as well as the increasing lack of satisfaction with Gillette, and it's reputation for being the self styled 'best a man can get'. The best your dad could buy, is maybe more apt.
When we unleash our TV campaign later this month, I believe we'll move up a notch, from a Category 2 brand hurricane to a Category 3 one and further disrupt and unnerve our competition. After all, razor advertising has looked pretty much the same since I was a young lad, 35 years ago - whilst almost everything else in the world has changed its look, feel and relevance to today's consumer.
But, where shaving is concerned, Gillette's motivation to move on the status quo, being pretty much a global monopoly has been zero, and Schick Wilkinson-Sword have simply tail-gated Gillette, sometimes running into their bumper (fender) with regard to 'we shave closer' law suits, that are (hopefully) a thing of the past. With Energizer (who own Wilkinson Sword) having just bought Edge & Skintimate, the shaving can brands from SC Johnson, I'll be interested to see what the 'Schick-Wilkinson-Sword-Edge' brand looks like (we're King of Shaves, The Future of Shaving and Gillette are still the self-styled 'Best a Man can Get') and what innovation SWSE bring to the market.
I like where we're living.
However, I'm no way complacent. "One thing Will" you might say to me, is "Hurricanes eventually lose their strength and peter out - is this going to happen to King of Shaves?" Well, my view is this - not any time soon & NOT on my watch. Gillette have been in business over a hundred years, we're seventeen years young next year, and I believe our Hurricane brand has a long way to track as yet, zagging unexpectedly and keeping its momentum and building strength year after year.
King of Shaves' Hurricane Azor is here to stay. And if you're competing with us in shaving hardware or software, best you batten down the hatches.
