Advertising Tactics/Media PlanMeghan Rochelle

FEMALE-FIRST SHAVING COMPANY

Overview

Billie is a cruelty-free shaving subscription service that is specifically catered towards women. Billie is known for using women with real hair in their advertisements. Billie is the first ever women’s razor brand to show body hair. Billie believes that showing hair on a female is important to show how well their products work. Billie originated in 2017 after the founder, Georgina Gooley, realized that women were overpaying for shaving products and being shamed for the hair on their body. Their products range from razors, shaving cream, lip balm, lotion and much more. Billie products can be purchased online at mybillie.com and their headquarters is located in New York.

Billie focuses on diversity, female empowerment, safe ingredients, and fair pricing. Billie uses women of various body types and ethnicities with body hair to show diversity. Billie prides itself on showing that women have hair, unlike most shaving advertisements directed towards women. Billie is well known for discarding the common “pink tax”. The “pink tax” is an unnecessary tax that is placed on various female products, such as personal hygiene. Billie is also proud to share with their consumers that their products are vegan and have no harmful ingredients such as sulfates, parabens, formaldehydes and so much more listed on their website and product labels.

Striving to make the world a better place, Billie is passionate about contributing to the community and its members. Billie donates 1% of their income from sales to various causes around the world. One of the causes Billie is most recently donating to is local food banks to help those directly impacted during the Coronavirus outbreak. Billie genuinely cares about the community and female empowerment. Billie strays far from the status quo and hopes to inspire others to do the same. Billie is changing the game in the female shaving industry and they are just beginning their revolution.

Hypothetical Plan

Billie attracts a younger crowd with a more progressive view towards body hair and shaving. The plan is to steer Millennials and Generation Z away from purchasing products from companies like Venus and Schick and start diving into affordable, cruelty-free, and high-quality shaving products that support women. By targeting a younger audience, we are able to promote to them in various ways, such as social media. Millennials and Generation Z can look at videos and posts through Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and so much more to learn more about the company and its products.

My plan is to use Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter to empower women in their shaving choices and use strategic marketing and social media advertising campaigns to promote awareness for Billie. Using these strategies will also increase the brand loyalty that consumers have for Billie and their shaving subscription service. I want to bring in my target audience by using celebrity influencers as well as regular women endorsing Billie products on social media. This will hopefully bring in a larger audience as they trust the opinion of influencers as well as regular women who have tried Billie products.

The authenticity of the women endorsing the products must be real and meaningful to create brand loyalty. We want our consumers to relate and feel comfortable with who they are purchasing their intimate hygiene products from. My plan is to also create a larger amount of positive body image content through social media campaigns, using celebrity and influencer endorsements to advocate for women empowerment, and building brand loyalty by using women who use Billie products will help Billie reach new heights that it needs for profit growth and an amazing reputation.

Media Objectives

o Promote Billie’s shaving services through using videos of regular women, as well as social media influencers, discussing their experience with Billie products to help increase followers and to appeal to millennials and generation Z.

o Increase followers and likes on social media by uploading content about women empowerment, body hair, women of color and different body types to gain attention from millennials and generation Z.

o Post more social media content about being vegan and cruelty-free to gain more attention from millennials and generation Z who find this important in a brand. This will essentially lead to brand loyalty because of the values that Billie places on this topic.

o Provide more information on the Billie website and social media platforms on the charitable donations and community outreach work that Billie does to display their effort towards corporate social responsibility and to enhance brand loyalty.

o Implement new content through YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook by producing a new campaign about the many ways a woman shaves and the struggles they face. This campaign will be relatable to women of all ages, but especially millennials and generation Z. This will show women that they are not alone and eventually the consumer will have loyalty towards the brand.

o Target advertising towards consumers who shave often and are millennials and generation Z.

Competitive Analysis

Billie’s Advertising Techniques

Founder Georgina Gooley knew that she wanted to change the women shaving industry in 2017 after many years of seeing women being advertised in shaving commercials as having no hair. Gooley used advertising and social media in her favor when she released the Project Body Hair campaign for Billie. The campaign depicted women of various ethnicities with hair on their armpit, legs, unibrow, stomach, bikini line and more. This was great advertising because it was uncommon in the shaving industry to show women with hair

The budget for this media plan is 5 million dollars. Billie will mainly use paid media to reach a wider audience. Billie will also focus on reaching more consumers by using word of mouth and unpaid media. For paid media, Billie will release a campaign to promote on social media (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter), as well as using this campaign on television and radio. These types of media are able to reach millennials and generation Z easier than other generations due to the commonality social media and other technological platforms have on this age demographic.

Their competitor would be the company Joy + Glee. They are a women’s shaving subscription service just like Billie. Joy + Glee offers a first-time buyer price of $10 and free

shipping for a razor, shower hook, and 2 blade refills. The cost of razor refills by itself is $9 for 4 refills. Billie has free shipping on their products and their razor starter kit is a dollar cheaper than Joy. Their razor, two refills, and a shower magnet is $9 total and no shipping cost. Razor refills cost $9 and you get 4 refills of razors every shipment.

Overall, it is more cost effective to choose Billie since it is cheaper to use their subscription services. Joy + Glee shows some body hair in one commercial online, but most of their content is not catered towards body hair positivity and body image empowerment. The main goal of Joy + Glee is to help women shave better with their razor, as they claim it does not pull hair as harshly as other brands do. Joy + Glee use digital art editing when showing body hair on their social media. They put little cartoon lines in fun colors to display women body “hair”, which is not as forward thinking as Billie is because Billie uses women with real hair. A similarity both companies have is that they both have similar looking razors with a range of similar color razors. They also are similar by using social media to show shaving in places that most brands do not show, such as the toes and arms. Joy’s social media shows more of the product than women who shave. Billie is smarter about social media advertising and its campaigns due to Billie focusing on the consumer and helping consumers relate to women who shave and show real body hair, not cartoon hair.

Target Audience Explanation

Targeting women who are millennials and generation Z is important because they are the main consumer of shaving products. Billie wants to entice shaving product users to switch to their shaving service subscriptions. Millennials and generation Z are remarkably familiar with social media and advertisements around them. Making sure that millennials and generation Z see how different and forward-thinking Billie can be is important to gaining new customers. These groups of people have seen technology develop and change through their life and they have an upper hand at understanding and navigating through the digital world. Using platforms

that millennials and generation Z use to inform them about Billie and what they are all about can increase brand loyalty and purchases of products.

The target audience is millennials and generation Z who often purchase shaving products and services. These consumers should be of that specific age group from millennials and generation Z because they post their opinions the most online. If they or someone they know posts about a product they like or dislike, their followers are more likely to either purchase or not purchase the product depending on the review. Social media presence is huge for millennials and generation Z due to the overwhelming use of technology in today’s society. It is important to reach this audience as they have a big impact on consumer purchases with their thoughts on the company.

Media Selection Rational

For my campaign, I will use Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter. I will also be using radio and television for other forms of media promoting the campaign. These are all big platforms that can reach a wide variety of people and consumers. These social media platforms make it easy for consumers to access new content and share it with their friends, family, or their social media platform as well to share their thoughts on Billie. This can create unpaid media/word of mouth marketing without Billie having done anything.

Using these social media platforms, Billie will be able to see the demographics we are reaching as well as if we are reaching our target audience. We can see this information by using Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube Analytics. Radio and Television is harder to gauge how much is reaching an audience, but we can choose which radio station and which television channels gains the most viewers that will get Billie noticed in society. It is important to choose a

channel and station that has a great number of viewers and that the time it is playing is when most listeners are channeling in.

Instagram and Facebook will be the most popular social media platform to post on due to the overwhelming amount of people who scroll on Instagram and Facebook every day. Millennials are more likely to check Facebook and generation Z is more likely to check Instagram. YouTube and Twitter are both used often and offer various differences than Instagram and Facebook. Billie can release video campaigns and commercials online using YouTube and Twitter can be reposted, liked, shared, and retweeted to a large audience. These social media mobile apps are super popular among millennials and generation Z. It is important to reach these consumers using the digital tools they access the most often. Using these social media platforms, Billie can increase their presence and awareness among millennials and generation Z and gain brand loyalty among new and old consumers of the product.