Dollar Shave Club
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2013–2016
1:34 · 29M views · Mar 6, 2012
Dollar Shave Club's low-budget launch ad, in which the founder jokes his way through the case for cheap mail-order razors.
HN holds it up as a great example of a funny, viral company video that frames the razor market well.
3 comments from Hacker News
Here's some friendly advice from someone that's done ads for one of my start-ups before. 1) If you can't get top-notch talent, just do the ad yourself. Why? You can tell when amateur actors are just "reading lines." They don't seem excited about the product, all they want to do is get through the script. The had has some brilliant ideas (the best friend cheating on your wife bit is quite funny) but the execution kills it. If you don't think you can pull off "acting" by yourself, even describing your business (like you do when trying to get into YC, for example) will go a lot farther than amateur actors reading off of a script. Something like "Hi, I'm Jim and this is what Lawdingo does. I'm excited to introduce you to this new blah blah" simply shows excitement (bonus points for being the co-/founder -- viewers get a warmer feeling). 2) If you really want to go the funny route (I don't think I would), do something ridiculous. An 80s eras commercial, a song-and-dance; something that has the possibility of going viral. Law advice is a relatively ubiquitous subject. Consider how GEIKO sells insurance. In your case, I'd say you went half-GEIKO. Go full-GEIKO. Be ridiculous if you want to be funny. The ad makes you seem sorta-kinda serious, so I can't help but get mixed feelings. If you want to see what a great example of the above is, consider: this video 3) Diction. Diction. Diction. Have some. Or your actors should have some. I remember we paid this one chick god knows how much to
Honestly, I like their branding. It is unique enough to stand apart, but not so far out there that its unapproachable or unnecessarily too hipster, and manly enough without scaring off the metro-sexual or gay crowd (and please, don't take this as offense, it's just that they gravitate to certain brands that are more "gentlemenly" than flat out "manly"). Their website portrays their brand extremely well, their famous video ( this video ) is absolutely amazing for how low budget it is, and, well, how fail it is and they just keep rolling with it. Its genius. I just wish they'd veer into the double edged safety razor market, which in my opinion, needs a bit of disruption too.
The article highlights Dollar Shave Club's 2012 introduction video[0], which is funny and fantastically frames the reality of the razor market. I don't know why I missed this a few years ago... [0] this video