Product Ad Teardown: Dollar Shave Club🪒 Classic Ad
👋 Hi, I’m Harkirat Singh. I write Inside Startup, a newsletter to help Startup founders and Product growth managers to accelerate their product growth through GTM strategy, growth and marketing experiments.
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Dollar Shave Club is a classic example of a startup that blew up—in a good way.
Do you remember the first signs of their success?
A Viral ad video.
Let’s dive deeper into what made this ad popular!
1. Insight 💡
Before DSC, Shaving Brands like Gillette were already ruling the market.
But Gillette blade's price is a bit on the higher side. Reason?
R&D costs, TV advertising costs, Wholesalers’ and Retailers’ margins and manufacturing costs.
Whereas DSC figured out that many customers don’t care about the over-the-top features of expensive razors.
So they came with a subscription service that promises no more retail trips, affordable prices and zero fanciness like expensive razors.
All this info boils down to the basic insight into play in this ad:
“Showing DSC as a better alternative to Gillette (and other brands) while telling a whole range of truths around using branded razors, in a humorous way” 😯
2. Messaging 🗨️
The ad’s first punch landed hard and became the core brand message.
"Our blades are f**king great.” 🤟
Crisp. Funny. Memorable.
The overall ad message revolves around 3 main points:
- The convenience of never having to shop for replacement blades again.
- Get these high-quality blades for just a dollar a month.
- Stop paying for shave tech you don’t need.
The last point is a direct attack on Gillette. 🤫
3. Tone & Visuals 👀
We often see that product explainer videos don’t include any humour.
But this ad mixes a conversational tone with wit & humour.
- The dialogues make use of short, slang-like language to convey core USP in a way that their TG will appreciate.
- While there were several subtle objects and moments that spice up the video but maybe missed upon the first view.
Example: The little girl shaving someone’s head and reading “ The lean startup” book 📖.
4. Characters 👨🏻🦱
Another thing that stands out with this ad is…
Making founder Mike Dubin the “face” of the ad, instead of the product i.e Razor. A few pointers:
- It’s hard to differentiate DSC from the razors that customers are used to buying.
- Mike Dubin establishes a powerful emotional connection with their audience instantly, which animation would fail to do.
Dubin is almost always on the move from start to finish.
Most importantly, he maintains eye contact with the camera throughout (and therefore with the audience).
As a result, The audience stays engaged till the end, thanks to his authentic personality and sense of humour.
Interesting fact: Mike ran all the social channels in the very beginning. All posts and messages came directly from the CEO himself.
That’s all from today!
Before you leave, How did you find this ad teardown? Comment below 👇
p.s If you like what you read, please share this post within your company Slack or Whatsapp groups. It means a lot to me :)