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Dollar Shave Club, a new web company that provides replacement shaving blades to customers each month for as little as a dollar, is, if you’ll pardon the pun, a damn sharp idea. Anyone who shaves with a “new tech” razor that boasts blade technology only slightly less advanced than the Death Star, and with an associated blade replacement cost that rivals the GDP of most Scandinavian countries, should gate-crash the website to sign up. Ah, but a lot of web-based startups with nothing but a great idea behind them have come and gone faster than you can say “pets.com.”

Mike Dubin, co-owner of D.S.C., wasn’t about to let that happen to his baby. The uproariously funny (not to mention pitch perfect, marketing-wise) viral web video that launched the company a few weeks ago has made Dubin a pitchman rock star while ensuring that D.S.C. came out of the gate at a full sprint.

Sure, the product and service are great (“f**king great” if the already famous video is to be believed), but how did an otherwise unknown entrepreneurial businessman manage to deliver a comedic performance that elicits more real laughs than the last three Adam Sandler flicks combined? Turns out Dubin is also a veteran of New York’s famed standup and improv troupe, The Upright Citizen’s Brigade. But the success of the business, and the ad campaign that launched it, is seriously effective.

With more than 4 million hits in first three weeks as a YouTube sensation, Dubin and his Dollar Shave Club are also experiencing explosive growth at the corporate level. I’m personally looking forward to my first shipment of blades (which unfortunately won’t arrive until May due to out of control demand) so I can officially join the D.S.C. party.

DAVE ROGAN IS A CREATIVE DIRECTOR AT SMM, AND SECRETLY WISHES HE COULD WIN THE POWERBALL LOTTERY SO THAT HE COULD AFFORD FACIAL ELECTROLYSIS IN ORDER TO NEVER HAVE TO SHAVE AGAIN.

In deference to my advanced years (presumably), Dave’s review usually appears after mine. This time around, however, I thought it appropriate that his glowing testimonial on behalf of the Dollar Shave Club come first. It also saves me a bunch of time explaining what D.S.C. actually is.

Following Gillette’s introduction of the two-blade razor, Saturday Night Live poked fun at the idea in a commercial parody for the “Triple-Trac Razor – a three-bladed shaver – 1975 (there’s that age thing again). If memory serves, Senator Al Franken appeared as caveman (not selling insurance) and had the tagline: “The Triple-Trac. Because you’ll believe anything.” Prophetic, huh?

I don’t know if it was out of embarrassment, but it took Gillette more than 20 years before they brought out the Mach3. They’re up to five blades now with the Fusion, which offers an additional sixth blade for “precision” trimming. It’s called “marketing” – among other things.

In the interests of transparency, I have to admit that I have no idea what brand I shave with or how many blades it has – it’s whatever was cheapest in bulk when my wife shops at Costco. I also shave in the shower and lather with bar soap instead of shaving cream – trust me: you can’t get a closer shave.

Getting back to marketing, what D.S.C. has done, and done brilliantly, is use the Internet to obliterate the implicit presumption that more blades provide a better shave. What they really provide, of course, is a better way to sell more blades. Think of it as an update on “The Emperor’s New Clothes” – casting Mike Dubin as the boy who wasn’t fooled. This is a basic strength of the Internet. It breaks the one-way monopoly the mass media holds on the message, and makes alternate viewpoints readily available. Ultimately, it forces brands to live up to what they promise, and exposes overblown claims to the cold light of reason. At least in theory.

BOB MATTSON IS THE CO-FOUNDING PARTNER, EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR AND SENIOR COPYWRITER AT SMM ADVERTISING.

The first shaving “testimonial” is attributed to Alexander the Great, who recommended it for his troops to avoid “dangerous beard-grabbing” in combat, and because it looked tidier. No record exists concerning any payoffs from the early iron razor merchants.

We take a fun, fresh and creative approach to advertising. Call Jen at: 631-265-5160, or email: jschmitt@smmadvertising.com
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2552°F is the melting point of silicon. That’s significantly higher than the temperature at which paper burns, which was famously adopted as the title of Ray Bradbury’s classic science fiction novel: Fahrenheit 451. For those who haven’t read the book (or experienced the inherent irony of the 1966 movie), it takes place in a dystopian future where people drive fast cars, watch wall-size televisions, and listen to earbud radios. Well, at least it was science fiction when Bradbury wrote the book in 1953.

In this future they also burn books. Not just certain books: all books.

The basis for this is the belief that the conflicting opinions and controversial issues that literature presents cause unhappiness and disruption in society. Authorities hunt down and destroy hidden caches of books and severely punish those caught hoarding them. There is an opposing, underground movement, of course, dedicated to such radical ideas as preserving independent thought and appreciating the natural world.

Today we drive fast, have big TVs, and listen to a lot more than just “radio” on our Bluetooth devices. What we aren’t doing is burning books (misguided Florida preachers notwithstanding). Instead we’re witnessing the written word progressively migrate from paper to our e-readers and web-enabled devices. Bypassing the printing press makes each of us a potential author (if only of a 140-character tweet) and independent thought remains alive, well, and more independent than ever. This fact, however, is not universally well received.

For a variety of reasons, governments around the world have attempted to censor the Internet. China is the most aggressive in its efforts to both ban content and monitor the use of the Internet by individuals, creating what is now referred to as “the Great Firewall of China”. Several nations in the Middle East are close behind them. Don’t assume, however, that such actions are limited to totalitarian and Islamic fundamentalist states. Both France and Germany, for example, have blocked content related to Nazism and denial of the Holocaust. Many countries block websites that involve child pornography or encourage the theft of intellectual property. As in the past, the central questions are whether legitimate reasons exist for a government to engage in censorship, and does the acceptance of censorship in any form move a society onto the proverbial slippery slope.

For myself, I believe these issues are moot… or at least soon will be. The irresistible acceleration of technology will continue to open more means of achieving online access and expand both wireless mobility and anonymity. Censors will find themselves engaged in an electronic version of Whack-A-Mole: close down one portal and another opens up. When the Mubarak government in Egypt shut down the country’s Internet during the Arab Spring, protesters were able to link up mobile devices through satellite Internet services. Despite the Great Firewall and an estimated 30,000 “Internet police”, China has had difficulty controlling internal microbloggers using weibo – the Chinese version of Twitter with over 300 million users. The only true way to control the Internet is to shut it down completely, and that is not going to happen.

Unlike the paper books in Bradbury’s novel, digital communication is integral to modern life. Modern societies cannot hope to survive, let alone compete in global markets, without these technologies or the networks they enable. Ultimately, controlling the Internet will prove to be an impossible task for even the most repressive governments. Independent thought will endure… with both its inherent benefits and dangers intact.

No, we aren’t about to melt down our silicon devices. For good or bad, the digital age is here: and, by its very nature, it does not recognize boundaries or accept limitations.

By,
Robert Mattson
Co-founding partner, Executive Creative Director and senior copywriter at SMM Advertising.

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