In China, wet shaving has a big problem; perception. Dry (electric) razors make up 70% of the market because here, having a wet shave is seen as old fashioned. This is something that the majority of the growth potential in the market; younger, progressive, technology obsessed buyers; would never want to be associated with.

Gillette needed the campaign to deliver a complete brand reappraisal, they needed a solution that would turn wet shaving from being something your granddad did into something the younger, newer consumers would be excited about experiencing for themselves.

Not only this, we needed to drive penetration and sell the product. The campaign was to focus on the key e-commerce day ‘singles day’ (11.11) and the task was to at least match the volume achieved last year, no mean feat considering this day in 2014 had delivered incredibly strong sales.

We launched during the build up to Singles Day (11th November), the biggest e-commerce day in China; promoting the VR video on China’s biggest social platform, Wechat. We wanted to take advantage of the huge spike in social activity at this time, caused by our audience sharing their purchase news. The video appeared in people’s Wechat Moments, teasing people with the unique experience they could have and directing them through to ecommerce site JD.com to purchase.

You simply cannot underestimate the size and impact that Wechat can deliver, we knew that using Wechat as our sole distribution channel would give us bigger impact than TV could across the same time period. Also, by staying true to our social first strategy we could seamlessly align ourselves with our target audience’s natural behaviour, so they could engage with the campaign and purchase the product with minimal effort on their behalf.