This is a story of how an orchestrated celebrity PR scandal sold 3 million razors in just 4 weeks, and resuscitated Gillette’s business in China.

The challenge was a decade of seemingly terminal category erosion: 7/10 men in China could no longer justify the inconvenience of wet shaving (preparation, shave, wash, care), driving 18.3 million switchers per year to more convenient dry shavers [Source: NCS 2012]. For Gillette this represented US$647.2 million in lost earnings between 06’-12’, and no amount of innovation or promotion could stem the exodus.

Everything changed with ‘Scandal Shave’. Inspired by the powerful insight that women in China find the act of men wet shaving extremely arousing to watch (N.B. an insight drawn from a campaign we did last year for Gillette); an unbranded ‘private’ home video of national sweetheart GaoYuanyuan, scantily clad and intimately wet shaving with a man was ‘leaked’ to the media to compellingly deliver our message, generating a national scandal of enormous proportion. Capitalising on this with a full suite of branded activities, the campaign helped Gillette reach 237 million people, record its highest ever monthly sales, and inflict a dent in the growth of the dry shaver category. Men were flabbergasted with the effect of wet shaving and felt compelled to try for themselves.

By delivering this message in an unconventionally provocative manner via PR, ‘Scandal Shave’ finally helped wet shaving deliver value men can see.

Acknowledging our target’s preference for taboo, extensive effort was applied to preserve the authenticity of the ‘private video’. Not only was the clip sent to weibo users via unmarked DVDs, once it surfaced online it was aided by a stream of ‘unbranded’ and carefully deployed editorial, opinion-leader involvement and dialogue seeding from celebrities on popular social networking sites like weixin and weibo; all of which helped the topic gain interest nation-wide as well as extensive coverage across radio programmes, magazines, blogs and national news.

Only after 2 weeks, did Gillette release a suite of branded initiatives to ‘own’ the conversation, including the unveiling of Gao YuanYuan as the brand’s first ever spokeswoman on popular news portals, release of branded initiatives (online competition, PR events, content, strategic media buys), as well as e-commerce partnerships with T-Mall (banners, brand pages, search); converting interest into sales of wet razors.

In just 4 weeks, the video reached 237 million people, achieved 450,000 interactions, and earned US$14 million in free media.

In terms of sales, the video helped sell 3 million razors, recording the brand’s highest launch sales month in its history in China.

Also, ‘Scandal Shave’ reversed the monthly sales of dry shaving category by 43%, representing a shortfall of 260,000 units; equivalent to an entire month’s sales of market leaders Philips and Flyco.

All the above were achieved without any changes in price/ distribution, and with just 10% of the average monthly media spend of the dry shaving category.