Rusty Bottoms
Gillette is considered quite sharp in their marketing and product development. After all they make razors and blades among other things, so they better be sharp, don’t you think?
For all the adulation I carried for Gillette as a brand, I used to be terrorised by it every morning, for one reason. Whenever I entered the bathroom and begun my perfunctory tryst with Gillette foam and Mach 3, I felt like I was having a close shave with — you know what — Tetanus. If you are wondering if I was afflicted by a chronic case of Razornickophobia, (Ok, I made that word up..) no, I was not terrified by the occasional nick or cut in itself. It’s the
Rusty Bottom that terrifies me.
Now if you are unclear about whose bottom we are we talking about here, let me clarify. It’s the Gillette shave foam can’s bottom that was ‘behind’ my phobia. Well, the rust prone steel can packaging of Gillette shave foam is
certainly not “The best a man can get”, is it?. It sits for months on end, on the wet sink, leaves unsightly ring marks of rust on the sink and/or wherever else it’s ugly bottom rests.
And rust is not something you want anywhere close to a morning ritual that sometimes involves a cut. Add in the long held belief, (not entirely accurate though) “when rust touches a wound, Tetanus ensues”, you could
understand why I was terrified.
After silently suffering Rusty Bottoms almost forever since I sprouted facial hair, recently I decided to take the matter into my own hands and express my protest to Gillette through a tweet, though feeble.
Not surprisingly, Gillette didn’t bother to reply. Meanwhile it dawned on me that I might not the only one who suffered this packaging design failure of epic proportions. So I trawled the social media for others like me and boy, was I overwhelmed with the number of people sharing their own travails with the rusty bottoms. But I eventually discovered this little gem, from Gillette itself, which reaffirmed to me that Gillette was indeed a sharp marketing co.
They didn’t exactly fix the shave foam can issue, but launched ‘Gillette Fusion ProGlide Sensitive 2-in-1 Shave Gel’ (higher priced & more profitable) as the solution to rusty bottoms along with solving another pain point of not knowing when your can is going to be empty!
So the ‘bottom’ line? Sharp marketeers never ignore customer feedback and they innovate to turn even negative feedback to their advantage.
PS: I am using Nivea shave foam now, which comes in a plastic can and is cheaper than the above gel. And I don’t need a gauge to know when it’s gonna be empty, because I’ve been shaving long enough.
