Turning a hair removal tool into a performance brand.

In 2020, surfing was set to make its big debut in the Olympic Summer Games in Tokyo, Japan. For this, Venus teamed up with one of the most influential women in the world of surfing, Carissa Moore. Carissa Moore is a 4X World Surf League Champion who is an advocate for body positivity and lover of the ocean—a perfect match for the Venus brand. When she surfs, Carissa has to endure harsh elements that can be hard on her skin, like daily sun exposure and the occasional reef cut. But even with everything Carissa’s skin goes through in the water, out of the water, Venus is here to help prepare and take care of her skin—how ever she wants to do that—giving her all the protection and confidence she needs to perform at the highest level in the Olympic Games.

Riding the wave from the first ever Olympic surfing event to a new campaign at the store shelf.

We helped Venus launch “Skin in the Game,” a campaign that challenged the conventional performance and knowledge of a razor as just hair removal and positioned it as part of a skin care regimen. By creating a national shopper platform and activations to support and drive purchase in-store, the brand was able to create a unique space in the category and was able to gain attention from retailers they it had never gotten before.

Reframing the brand and the in-store experience.

With the creation of mood boards, we wanted to contextualize where Carissa would get ready for her performance, and the role Venus would play. We wanted to pull in elements that she’d see in her own environment, and giving shoppers an unexpected experience right in the grocery store aisle. Everything from sand, sea, and reef, we search out inspiration from to help us reposition the product, and turn it into a performance brand. Everything from the textures and finishes we wanted, to the structures and materials we wanted to use, were considered and turned into a moodboard. The key was a fine balance between what the shoppers already knew of our brand, and what we wanted them to think of us in the future.

Bringing the performance to the grocery store.

Where does performance start for both Carissa Moore and Venus? In the shower. And we wanted to bring that space to life in the most unexpected place imaginable. The grocery store aisle. Putting pencil to paper, we planned out different ways to hijack the shopper experience and showcase our line or performance enhancing tools. We knew this had to be more than a simple cutout of our sponsored athlete, and more than a hair removal tool. We needed to cue the shaving category, but push it to its limits as we reframed our product and convinced people that we were more than a hair removal tool. The result was a disruptive display that reframed the problem of hair removal, and turned it into a solution of skin care.

A disruptive experience for shoppers.

Using textures like tile and wood, materials like surfboards and water, we brought our partnership with Carissa Moore to life with the help of our new campaign, asking shoppers to put their “skin in the game”. Surf boards, showers, beach, sand and sun all came together with the help of Venus to disrupt a disruptive category by reframing expectations of what the typical shaving category and aisle looked like. These elements all came to life with the support of Carissa and her story of body positivity, to bring a personal experience and Olympic story to life at the shelf.

Reframing performance for our retailers and shoppers.

When it finally came to life, the campaign felt real, it positioned Venus razors as a performance enhancing tool, and it successfully connected with both shoppers and retailers. Although the Olympic Summer Games were pushed a year out to 2021, the campaign still created buzz and Venus saw an increase in sales among other brands—even in one of the most challenging seasons to be a razor… But maybe that’s because they’re not just a razor anymore.

Venus Aloha