In March 2012, a guy named Michael Dubin walked through a warehouse and talked to a camera for about a minute and a half. That was the whole marketing plan.
His company, Dollar Shave Club, mailed you razors every month for a few bucks. The competition was Gillette, a brand so big it basically owned the razor aisle and spent fortunes on ads with sports stars and slow-motion chin shots.
Dubin’s video cost about $4,500 to make. It opens with him saying “Are our blades any good?” followed by a cheerfully bleeped “No. Our blades are f*ing great.” Then he walks through the warehouse, past a guy shrink-wrapping boxes, past a toddler shaving a man’s head, gets handed a machete, and ends up dancing badly with a giant bear. It is ridiculous. It is also the best explanation of a product I have ever seen.
What happened next
The website crashed within the first hour. In the first 48 hours, they got about 12,000 orders. The video racked up millions of views in a few months. And four years later, Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for a reported $1 billion.
Meanwhile, Gillette’s share of the razor market started slipping, and they ended up launching their own shave club and cutting prices. When the giant starts copying the little guy, the little guy won.
Why a cheap video beat an expensive brand
Everyone remembers the swearing and the bear. But the jokes were the wrapper. Look at what the video actually said:
- It named the customer’s real annoyance. Razors are crazy expensive and locked up behind plastic at the store. Everybody felt that. Nobody was saying it.
- It explained the offer in seconds. A dollar a month. Delivered to your door. Done.
- It took a shot at the big guy without naming him. A line about not needing a fancy razor with a bunch of blades and a vibrating handle. Everyone knew who that was about.
- It had a personality. You felt like you knew Mike. You’d have a beer with Mike. You have never wanted to have a beer with a razor brand before.
Notice what wasn’t in there. No mission statement. No “innovative shaving solutions.” No logo animation for the first ten seconds. Just a guy, a problem, a better deal and a bear.
“But we’re B2B, we can’t do that”
I hear this every time. And look, I’m not saying put a toddler with a razor in your next product video. Please don’t. HR will call.
But the recipe works in any industry:
- Find the thing your buyers complain about when your competitors aren’t in the room. Long contracts? Hidden fees? Onboarding that takes six months?
- Say it out loud, plainly, the way your customers say it.
- Show how you fix it in one sentence a tired person could repeat.
- Put a real human in front of the camera. Your founder, your best salesperson, the engineer everyone loves. B2B buyers are buying a relationship. Let them meet someone.
You don’t need a big budget to take on a big brand. Just ask Volvo Trucks. You need to be clearer, braver and more human than they are. Big brands are terrible at all three, because they have too many meetings. Use that.
