Dollar Shave Club is looking for a new CMO
Dollar Shave Club, known for its cheeky marketing campaigns and emphasis on Bro Branding, is looking for a new Chief Marketing Officer: a CMO who can guide this former disrupter into a new era of catering to the booming men’s wellness market.
Rising to fame on the back of a slapstick marketing campaign that emphasized the indie brand’s simplistic offering- high quality, low cost razors delivered straight to the door- Dollar Shave Club has since been acquired for a whopping $1 billion in 2016 by Unilever. Unilever now wants consumers to view the Bro Brand as the ultimate destination for men’s wellness, from resources to the tools needed for their body and mind.
The name for this next era of the brand? This is at least one thing the company is retaining from its simple roots: “Dollar Shave Club 2.0.”
This is not the first time a direct-to-customer e commerce company has mixed products with educational content. Brand-less, a home-goods basics company that managed to raise $240 million in a Series C round, also posts a comprehensive blog with stories from meal planning to volunteering with Brandless’ social-impact initiatives.
The challenge for Dollar Shave Club, however, is going to manage this transition to lifestyle brand, replete with a multinational giant for a parent company, without losing any of its edginess that first launched it to fame. It’s core fan base- Bros- must still come first.
The search for a new CMO to manage this transition comes at a critical time for the company: in pre-acquisition 2016, Dollar Shave Club held a comfortable 48.6 percent of the online razor market, and continues to command half of industry sales today. Still, competition from start-ups is on the rise: products by Walker & Company’s Bevel were carried by Macy’s earlier this year, and Billie, a women’s shaving brand aiming to fight the “pink tax”, has managed to raise $6 million.
Still, Dollar Shave Club doesn’t seem too fazed. “Right now, our focus is on building a direct relationship with our consumer, and we’re always evaluating options to maximize and deepen that connection with our customers and members,” asserts Michael Dubin, Dollar Shave Club’s founder and CEO.
Indeed, the company’s latest campaign retains the cheeky tone that first captured the hearts of Dollar Shave Club’s first bro-stomers. The latest “Get Ready” video plays on the embarrassing- and sometimes embarrassing- routines men carry out in the privacy of their own bathrooms, including duct-tape chest waxing, overuse of baby powder, and the spritzing of genitalia with perfume. The clip even includes a cameo by Dubin, who stuffs his undies with toilet paper in a bid to boost his… endowment.
“Dollar Shave Club has been evolving,” Dubin says of the campaign, “as a startup, we were a company that sent you razors in a box once a month or every other month. We’re moving into being a company that sends you everything you need in the bathroom to look, smell and feel your best.”
Whoever the Dollar Shave Club elects as their new CMO will certainly have their hands full: managing the shift from disruptive start-up to industry giant is no small task. Still, if this latest campaign is anything to go by, Dollar Shave Club intends to glide through the transition with a smile.
