Nobody:
eos: let’s disrupt the women’s shaving category. By 2023, eos had already grown for two consecutive years, thanks to taboo-busting campaigns like “Bless Your F#@%ing Cooch”, “Vagnastics”, and “Pubes For The Planet”, all focused on grooming your privates.
But we knew growth in 2023 would be harder:
• We – the challengers! – were also being challenged by new, niche entrants
• Historically high inflation rates impacting consumer spend
• Increased promotional pricing in the category by legacy players
Bottom line, despite our rapid growth in recent years, eos is still a challenger brand in this crowded category, because we’re out-spent 16:1 by legacy competitors.
Interest in self-care and skin-care was increasing among Gen Z. From the viral #everythingshower TikTok trend to maximalist skin care routines, we saw an opportunity to pull shaving out of the "grooming grudge" category and turn it into a skincare essential.
Shaving was more than just the removal of something unwanted, it was an essential step in Gen Z’s self-care rituals. Our storytelling aimed to elevate the role eos shave cream could play in Gen Zs life; evolving the shave experience from what you're losing (hair) to what you're gaining (soft skin).
The big idea was to elevate the role of eos shave in Gen Z’s life, as a must-have affordable luxury experience for impossibly soft skin. And of course, since we can’t out-spend, we try to out-disrupt, out-brave, and out-imagine, resulting in an unignorable campaign “Skin So Soft Even Soft Things Think You’re Soft”.
The work is centered on the idea that eos makes your skin so luxuriously touchable that the softest things on earth won’t be able to keep their paws of you. Foxes, pet dogs...they're all clamoring to touch that super soft skin.
We know through our market research that the Gen Z audience doesn’t consume content on traditional channels, so we leaned into OTT/CTV placements, Youtube, and various social media platforms. We also launched a companion campaign on TikTok with 6 creators who showcased their self-care #showertok rituals, and how their furbabies loved snuggling into their soft skin after shaving.
Ad Age called it “preposterous yet somehow totally logical”. Yahoo said "so bizarre that it is, in fact, genius." The ads are absolutely unignorable, and yielded a 2X lift to YouTube benchmarks for Awareness and Favorability and 3X lift for Consideration. Most importantly, the campaign drove continued phenomenal business growth in eos shave:
• Grew +20% faster rate than entire category growth in 2023
• Accounted for over 1/4 of all market growth in 2023
• Added +150bps of market share in 2023, on top of prior 2yrs of growth
• Grew HH penetration over +40% in 2023
The strategy to reposition shave care as skin care is core to how we're building the eos brand, not just for today's product segments, but for our vision of becoming a multi-category brand that is synonymous with softness, smoothness, and a go-to beauty resource for Gen Z.
