An idea that's nowhere near as sharp as the blades on offer!

In a world where YouTube is the new way to (potentially) become an instant celebrity overnight, there are endless numbers of people hoping to be the creator of the next viral video, suddenly having the world at one's feet. An extension of that possibility is the purposeful usage of YouTube by web-savvy marketers as a testing ground for a particular advertising approach, if not test marketing the actual product idea itself. 

One such effort that has caught my eye is the rather ubiquitous video advertising the supposed next big thing in men's razor blades and shaving care - Dollar Shave Club. The premise is that for a mere dollar a month, you (or if you are a woman, then the man in your life) can have blades shipped direct to your door at a minimal cost. Why bother going to an actual store to procure over-priced blades when they can be delivered right into your eager hands each month?!

Of course, among various initial responses I had to the marketing schtick (please note, that was schtick, not Shick!) was the inevitable one - it was too good to be true. How can they do all that for a dollar a month, which would barely cover shipping costs alone? Quite naturally, the simple answer is that they can't! A closer inspection of the offer reveals that you can have five extremely basic razors (the "Humble Twin") for $3.50 which is admittedly a reasonable deal. 

A clear message in CEO Mike Dubin's spiel is that for us men, our grandfathers had no problem scraping a primitive blade across their faces, so why all the fuss over four or five blade razors, and lubricating strips, and battery-driven motors to make the cutting a smoother operation and sensation? If it was good enough for grandad then it's good enough for us, right? Wrong. 

Anyone with business expertise in the men's grooming segment has to know that in your typical pharmacy, what used to be a few short shelves dedicated to male grooming has expanded enormously to handle what has become a vast market. Men no longer have to ask their wives to get them that shower gel they secretly love or buy them that new fancy anti-perspirant, because it is no longer considered effeminate for a man to actually choose what he washes or scrapes his face with!  Men can now stroll in boldly to the men's shelves and stare adoringly at the wealth of luxurious new products directed at little old us, and insist on making an educated choice. 

So, there goes the main and initial premise of Dollar Shave Club (DSC) - give men what they want, the cheapest razor possible, with no bells and whistles. I can tell you right now that it ain't gonna work, today. But someone at DSC clearly realised that also, so guess what, they also do offer razors that are far from what grandad used to torture himself with. Hence we have the "4X" and the "Executive" - four razors per month at a cost of $6.50 and $9.50, respectively. The latter even comes with a strip of aloe, lavender and Vitamin E - can you imagine grandad's face scoffing at that girly razor?!

Given that we have dispensed with the hypothesis that men do still want grandad's old blades, and that we in fact want something fancier, well, why would I move to this offer from the luxury blades being offered by the seasoned professionals and skilled engineer-designers of say, Gillette? Yep, the only reason would be price. But it's going to be $9.50 per month for four blades from DSC, versus half a five-pack of Gillette Fusion at about $16-20 total, so around $8-10. Where's the point?

Thus we come to another issue which DSC saw coming, so they brought up the whole idea of us men forgetting to buy blades as the reason for joining DSC. We never have to worry again, because our blades come to our door, for life. But what if I don't just have to buy blades at the grocery store or pharmacy, and because I buy many other items then blades are just one on the list and I do it all on the same trip? This means I am not likely to forget to buy blades, nor see much advantage in only my blades coming to my door, when I have to go to the pharmacy for all the other stuff, anyway. 

Additionally, what if I don't need four blades a month due to having some facial hair, or I only want/need to shave three times a week? I am going to have two spare blades per month, and the next, and the one after that, so before you know it the wife is going to be screaming at me when she opens the bathroom cabinet and a mountain of blades falls all over her, scarring her for life?! At least when we buy blades when we need them, we are not accumulating blades we don't use. 

I think it's really a case of great marketing and the viral (and admittedly clever and humorous) video that promotes a product, being superior to the actual product itself. An idea that does not in my opinion solve any real problem or customer need. One sees this as a criticism on "Dragon's Den" all the time - where what looks like a cool, quirky product actually gets torn apart as something that is trying to solve a problem which doesn't actually exist. Investors run a mile from such things. 

The guy in the video, Michael Dubin, is the CEO of DSC, which he founded with Michael Levine, back in 2012. I guess the fact that the YouTube video is now doing the rounds on primetime TV is a sign that their launch went well, and they now want to explode the concept across the entire country, and maybe even the world. I wish them all the best with that, even if I see it in the end as a very limited market that will appeal to only a certain percentage of us shavers. 

You know? Given that it may indeed be housewives who actually are the demographic that buy the bulk of men's blades, for their husbands, maybe the marketing should actually be targeted towards women, not men, because it is they who have to hear us screaming from the same bathroom cabinet - "Honey, where's my new blades, you said you would pick them up on the weekend? Don't tell me you forgot, again? Whattttt?" - and another version of WWIII erupts!

On that note, so that I can settle in with a clear mind and conscience for my power nap during this afternoon thunderstorm, let me race into the bathroom and ensure that my stocks of lubricated, five blade motorised Rolls Royce razors are adequate for the next month, at least! ;) - Kevin Mc

PS Not sure you noticed, but I wonder if the free advertising for Toyota (or even Roger Federer!) is a coincidence, or they sponsor DSC in some way?! 

When blah-blah-blah can ruin the View!

Sometimes when you're in TV, and often on TV, it's best to not forget that the microphones are always on, one way or another. It can pay to filter what's on its way from the neuronal highway down to your mouth, before the entire world (or a compartmentalized section of it) gets to hear it or read it. 

This is something that resonates with a certain Jenny McCarthy today, I imagine, after recent events surrounding the television version of (un)happy families, commonly known as "The View". In a recent interview for the "New You" magazine when asked the job interview-like question of where she thought she would be in a couple of decades, McCarthy wheeled out the rather optimistic statement that she expected to still be on "The View". This became an extremely ironic state of affairs when it was subsequently announced (seemingly mere hours later) that "The View" had in fact unceremoniously exited her. Ouch!

Now don't get wrong, I don't know what she was doing on that show in the first place, but you have to be totally heartless to not feel even a wee bit of sympathy for her, but that's all she gets. Especially on a show that has become a dysfunctional version of musical (host) chairs of late, one should not predict that even the show will be around in twenty years, never mind oneself! It sure came across as a serious touch of hubris on Jen's part, not least given the fact that this show was founded by a real deal, old school, living legend journalist, i.e. none other than our Babs, Barbara Walters. Need I say that Jen ain't no Barb?!

Quite what McCarthy thought she contributed that made her in any way whatsoever indispensable, is way beyond even my imagination. She's a former Playboy alumni, who parlayed that into way more fame than was merited (is it ever merited?!) and some bright spark at "The View" felt that her extremely controversial views on autism and vaccination, and parenting, somehow made her qualified to be spouting on any number of topical issues on a daily basis on the show. The last thing I remembered her hosting was some candyfloss tropical island version of "The Bachelor(ette)"; all bare skin and exposed hormones, which is way more her thing than any legitimate talk show. 

It remains quite shocking to many that Walters and Geddie let her in, not least in the face of serious and vocal objections by personalities from Time magazine, The New Yorker, The Huffington Post, and even some public health authorities who began Twitter campaigns to get her booted from the show. 

"It's high time the woman who once said that 'I do believe sadly it's going to take some diseases coming back to realize that we need to change and develop vaccines that are safe' took a step back and reconsidered the merits of that increasingly crackpot stance. And it's time she acknowledged that clinging to research that's been deemed patently fraudulent does not make one a 'mother warrior.' It makes her a menace."

But the fact that a former Playboy model managed to almost start a movement in terms of her totally uneducated opinion on how vaccination causes autism, in the absence of any medical/scientific evidence of any kind, well, it kind of does prove that when you have fame, you can get taken seriously on any number of matters that you have almost zero foundation for talking publicly about. I mean, who in God's name wants to hear Sharon Osbourne's opinions on basically anything, yet there she is on the execrable (and execrably-named) "The Talk" - a weakass attempt to clone/compete with the heretofore queen of housewives' talk shows, "The View". 

It's either that someone made a huge mistake when bringing Jen in, or that they always knew that her arrival would cause a lot of fuss (i.e. free publicity), then they could dispense with her when she didn't work out. TV has become that cynical of late, I feel, if one thinks of all the shenanigans that have gone on in the talking heads arena in recent times. McCarthy lasted barely a year in the end, and if that was a sign of producing issues on the show, well, even veteran linchpin producer Bill Geddie is now out, so someone must have decided that enough was enough, I guess. 

Hearing McCarthy announce that she was leaving too if Sherri Shepherd was out came across as hilarious given the fact that McCarthy was already out, in spite of her excruciatingly embarrassing prediction of two decades more on "The View". I will bet you any amount of money imaginable that had she not already been out, she would not have said a word about leaving herself! But saving face is King, even when exited from the queen of daytime talk shows, it seems. 

These shows are such stereotypes, and in the absence of real, raw talent and professional polish as exemplified by a Barbara Walters or a Meredith Vieira, then they are doomed to repeat previous mistakes and get further down and dirty, all in the relentless pursuit of ratings. This fact is underscored by the almost inconceivable return of that classic loose cannong radical, Rosie O'Donnell. God help them, but if they hired her again then they are gluttons for punishment and they deserve what happens next. I am sure the Trumpster would agree with me!

It was no shock at all that Rosie's "The View" nemesis, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, went on the offensive and attacked the move. But Hasselbeck herself should never have been on that show; her only claim to fame previously having been a non-winning contestant on "Survivor", but like Jen she was blonde and glamorous so let's bring her on. Sadly, she was as out of touch with the show's demographic as O'Donnell is to listening to anyone else's opinions on almost anything. Quite appropriate that Hasselbeck refers to her outrage as a #monoversation on Twitter, because essentially all of her spouting on "The View" was either talking to herself, or to the 1%-ers in the audience. No one at the table ever cared to hear it. 

The thing that really annoys me about all of these shows with a bunch of women spouting their varied opinions is that rarely is anyone even close to being an authority on anything, so it's all meaningless blah-blah until the bitching begins. Then things start to get really interesting if you are either the show's producer(s) or a bored audience member. Production values have become so crass that this is what they really want to see today, as opposed to deep, meaningful actual conversation. Cue that split screen of Rosie and Elisabeth going at it on the "View"! 

I am sorry, and maybe it's my stereotypical male point of view (no pun intended!), but if you put a gaggle of gals of varying ages from different generations and cultures combined with questionable degrees of "celebrity", together at a table, well, it almost certainly is going to get bitchy once the gloves come off. At some point when home on a day off, it took mere minutes of listening to Behar, Hasselbeck, O'Donnell and Walters going at it to cringe in physical pain and change the channel in a flash. All I can say is that all those housewives must truly be bored if they can sit and listen to that high paid bitching, each and every day! And/or, no wonder the hubbies get it in the ear over dinner in the evening, after their gals got amped up by a huge fight on the show earlier, and the wife is just bursting with tension over what happened. 

"You wouldn't believe what that bitch said about my girl Elisabeth, how dare she?! They were all ganging up on her, I wanted to fly to New York and race to the studio to defend her! Uh-huh. How are the kids today? What? Listen! There's evidence that some of these vaccines cause autism, I heard all about it! Isn't Jenny an amazing mother warrior? Don't be ridiculous, vaccines don't cause nothing, and I should know, I am a doctor! Oh yeah, go on, play the MD card, and put down one of my girls, why don't you? You never listen, and you refuse to try to understand, you men are all the same! Aww, for Christ's sake, not another evening ruined by that godamn show again, I am off down the pub for a pint and a burger and the football game. You can be exited from this show, boy, just like my Elisabeth was, don't you dare leave this set, errr, house!!" 

One day we might get back to higher class highbrow TV conversation shows that actually deliver content and actually remember that there is an audience out there; maybe someone should be told that seeing a bunch of famous and famously overpaid women going at it, or ganging up on each other, does little for those seeking distraction. It just reminds them of their very own coffee mornings or girls nights out - because the days of "The View" (or any of the current wannabe clones) actually being inspirational are sadly way, way back in the past. Just as the memory of Jenny McCarthy ever being on the show soon will be!

If I was in ABC's place, I would be thinking long and hard about how to turn this thing around, because it's starting to look like a sinking ship. No, I do not in any way believe that Rosie O'Donnell is going to steer the ship into calmer waters, and we all know already that if she slips even once or twice, she will be lucky to survive one year. Come back Babs, all is forgiven, because in the absence of a real journalist or someone respected as an authority on contemporaneous topics - it's all just blah-blah-blah spoiling the view! - Kevin Mc