Mobile Magic: The Saatchi and Saatchi Guide to Mobile Marketing and Design

Chapter 17.3: Out of the Cold: Gillette Venus Sweden’s “Tag the Weather” Campaign

Based on an Interview with Per Jaldeborg Planning Director Saatchi & Saatchi Stockholm

It was more of an experiment, really. Traditionally, razor sales go down in the wintertime. Even in the United States, it’s a difficult goal to keep sales consistent throughout the year, but in parts of the world where the winters are long, dark and frigid—such as Sweden—it’s a really big challenge. But that’s just what Procter & Gamble Nordic, owners of the Gillette Venus razor brand, asked us to do. First we had to know why people don’t buy razors in the winter. We started by talking to Venus’s target group: women 18–35. We learned a lot of valuable information about them. For example, when we delved into whether women shave their legs for themselves or for others, we found that the question doesn’t really matter because they shave for both reasons. We began to play with a very simple premise: Women don’t buy razors in the cold months because shaving is simply not top of mind.

So we said, “All right, who’s going to be the enemy here?” And the answer was: the weather. That was where we began to concept. Our core target group was younger Scandinavian women aged 20–25. So we looked at our audience from a Scandinavian point of view and knew that we had to stand out in an advertising category that tends to show models ...