eos was coming off an incredibly successful year in 2021. The goal of presenting a more relatable and extremely differentiated shaving brand to young women exploded behind the “Bless Your F*ing Cooch” partnership with influencer Carly Joy. But as we looked to 2022, we knew:
eos was significantly outspent in the mature category, which seemed disconnected from the reality of young women. We saw an opportunity to drag shaving out of the doldrums by poking light fun at all the rites of passage we all experience when we’re younger. We wanted to bring humor and relatability to our Gen Z audience and highlight WHY we shave (for those extra special moments) instead of the typical problem/solution style of marketing in the category.
Social listening and qualitative research revealed that young women still believed that polite, precious, and utterly unhelpful women’s shave marketing messaging was disconnected from their reality. And our success from Bless Your F*ing Cooch showed us the value of being hyper-relatable as a brand. While the rest of the category was focusing on straightforward problem/solution, product-driven marketing, we wanted to bring our irreverent approach to broader platforms.
We knew from our social listening that shaving wasn’t just about the act itself. It was about deeming something “shave-worthy”. And young people have big milestone moments ALL.THE.TIME. First job, first home, first time you treat yourself to a nice restaurant. For the moments that are extra shave-worthy, we wanted to establish eos as Gen Z’s go-to choice that’s worth shaving with. By showcasing highly relatable moments – like that first real job interview, or a special date with a not-so-special person – our campaign featured young Gen Z women with real bodies, in funny yet relatable situations and shaving all different body parts (as women do).
We know through our market research that the Gen Z audience doesn’t consume content on traditional channels, so we opted for premium, high-impact digital video platforms: CTV and YouTube. Prioritizing the longer format content for CTV, with guaranteed video completion, allowed our narrative to resonate and led to exceptional brand lift. With its diverse offering of placements, YouTube allowed us to communicate the brand narrative across the funnel, catching eyeballs and clicks for both our long and short form content.
The campaign FAR exceeded our goals! This campaign boosted eos’ momentum as the preferred shave brand for Gen Z women, resulting in accelerated market share growth and household penetration.
eos drove over half of all shave category growth in 2022 and we added an astonishing +120bps of market share, on top of a stellar amount of growth in the prior year.
