As a teen girl, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out what hair on your body is deemed acceptable. Hair on your head is fine, but hair on your legs is not. As for hair on your upper lip—get rid it immediately. Eyebrows must be plucked so they look thin, unless bold, fluffy eyebrows happen to be in fashion. Over the course of a lifetime, all this hair removal requires hours of work and costs as much as$23,000.
Billie, a shaving startup, wants to throw out the rule book. It just released a children’s book aimed at destigmatizing body hair, as well as a new ad that urges girls not to feel pressure to get rid of their hair. This marketing seems counterintuitive for a brand that makes its money from hair removal, but its cofounder believes that this approach is actually good for business.
去污名化的身体头发
Billie的联合创始人Georgina Gooley在2017年推出了该品牌，这是一系列更广泛的直接面向消费者剃须的初创公司的一部分，其中包括Harry's和Dollar Shave Club等男性品牌以及Flamingo和Flamingo和Athena Club等女性品牌。（比利（Billie）去年被斯基克（Schick）的母公司埃奇韦尔（Edgewell）收购。）所有这些产品（包括剃须刀，剃须膏和沐浴露）的所有这些产品都以类似的价格出售。正是他们的营销和设计与他们区分。
Gooley, who previously worked at advertising firm Wieden and Kennedy, had expertise in making a brand stand out. As she researched the shaving industry, Gooley realized that brands had been marketing products to women for more than a century, but rarely showed any body hair on models. “They would show women shaving a pre-shaved leg because leg hair was considered so taboo,” says Gooley. “It was really internalizing shame around having body hair.”
从一开始，她就决定发出这样的信息，即身体头发并不尴尬。2018年，比利（Billie）首次亮相了一场名为“身体头发”项目的运动，他断言这是一个剃须品牌首次显示模型在腋下，腿部和腹部上剃光真头发。但是，随后，比利（Billie）提出了进一步的措施，认为女性不需要刮胡子。2019年夏天，比利（Billie在带有阴毛的泳衣中. That fall, the brand’s advertising focused on de-stigmatizing women’s upper lip hair. “We wanted to reframe the conversation, and say that shaving should be a choice, not an expectation,” she says. “Just putting images out there of body hair helps to normalize it.”
这se campaigns made a splash. The ads were viewed millions of time, and everyone from魅力到这New York Times写了关于比利的文章。但是从商业角度来看，这种方法似乎有可能冒险：如果广告具有预期效果，它可能最终鼓励妇女完全停止剃须，从而使Billie的剃须刀不必要。但是古利不同意。一方面，她认为即使选择保留某些身体的女性也可能仍然想要剃刀在家。她说：“他们可能会选择长发头发，但后来又刮胡子。”“他们可能来回走动。”
而且，也许从战略上讲，这种方法使Billie能够捕捉根本不想刮胡子的消费者，邀请他们购买Body Lotion和Soap等产品。Gooley说：“我们希望成为所有女性的品牌，而不仅仅是那些剃须的女性。”
让他们年轻
With this newest campaign, Gooley wants to speak to girls and tweens. As the brand conducted focus groups, it discovered that many women first learned that body hair was embarrassing at a young age. “A common story was that she was in elementary school, happily going through life, when someone pointed out that they had body hair on a part of their body where it shouldn’t be,” she says. “It can be a traumatic moment. Kids aren’t born thinking one way or another about body hair, but over time, social expectations and pressures set in.”
Gooley points out that culture continually reinforces this. She recalls being a pre-teen and watching romantic comedies in the ’90s in which women shave their legs before going to a party. “It very much glamorized shaving for me,” she recalls. “It associated shaving with femininity and womanhood, and I was excited to get my first razor. It wasn’t until later that I realized that this was a highly gendered message.”
这本书遍历了身体的许多方面，从为什么它存在到您开始看到它的时候，并以总体信息结束，即每个人都应该能够选择自己的头发做什么。Gooley说：“我们想在操场上的一些孩子到达他们之前为他们提供这些知识。”“我们希望他们没有对自己的头发感到羞耻，或者感觉以某种方式看起来的压力，而是希望他们与关键的镜头进行对话，并有言语来捍卫自己免受试图羞辱他们的人。”
与这本书一起，Billie创建了一个新广告，其中包含一个青春期前的女孩，分类有关身体头发的所有复杂规则。她探索了怪异的矛盾，就像鼓励女人剃光腋窝的事实一样，但除非她们是专业的游泳者，否则男人却不是。或那个阴毛在70年代很大，但到90年代，它已经不再酷了。Gooley说：“关键是要展示这些规则有点荒谬。”‘关键是，如果您选择剃须，我们为您提供了一个很棒的剃须刀。但是，如果您不想刮胡子，我们也想庆祝这一点。”
After all, you can always buy the makeup wipes or shower gel.