On April 9th, Stark Industries, the tech company owned by Tony Stark (Iron Man) in The Avengers, took over Gillette Headquarters to launch new razor technology via a fictional press conference that was live streamed across the web. Poking fun at consumer skepticism of razor innovation, Gillette and Tony Stark announced the development of new razor prototypes for each Avenger:

- The Iron Man razor with arc reactor technology

- The Hulk razor that uses brute force

- The Captain America razor that cuts hairs with his shield

- The Thor razor with microlightning technology

In contrast, FlexBall was positioned as the only technology that guys would want to put against their face. The idea was born from the understanding that passionate fans of The Avengers would likely be engaged and humored by the tongue-in-cheek reference to technology, and this could then be amplified through strategic content and media activations.

The Stark Industries takeover of Gillette HQ, generated mass and niche media coverage, delivering 522 million impressions (58% earned). Content showcasing the Avengers-themed razors, but positioning FlexBall as superior, ran in cinemas nationwide and on a Times Square billboard. Additional highlights:

- Digital media leveraged image recognition technology GumGum to pinpoint and align Gillette’s creative with Avengers-related content.

- Gillette-branded Avengers hub on IGN and Hitfix hosted sought-after content (i.e. hidden secrets from the film), generating high engagement and CTRs 4x and 9x higher than Gillette benchmarks, respectively.

- Created with Marvel, a custom digital comic – telling the story of Stark’s fictional takeover of Gillette HQ - was discoverable across Twitter and Tumblr, which fans were quick to discover and share.

- To leverage the audience’s passion for gaming, we partnered with a gaming influencer, who shaved with FlexBall, live on Twitch while playing Marvel’s Heroes.

Awareness of the Avengers partnership was strong amongst men 18-34, resulting in +18% increase in Gillette Likeability and +13% increase in Brand Relevance scores. Increased likeability and relevance, combined with 99% positive sentiment in press coverage, indicate that the content and media strategy had successfully driven cultural relevance and greater affinity for Gillette.

These strong core brand metrics were fueled by benchmark-busting media engagement performance. The day of the launch, the Gillette Avengers video was the #10 most-shared video on YouTube. That month, it was ranked #8 on the YouTube Leaderboard (ranking of the most engaging ads on YouTube) and became the most viewed Gillette video to date.

CTRs of 0.30%-0.50% surpassed Gillette norms (0.08%), and consumers spent 4% more time on Gillette.com, generating a 36% increase in Purchase Intent (measured via “Add to Cart” metrics). These results firmly indicated that The Avengers campaign successfully shifted skepticism for FlexBall’s innovation.