Why Dollar Shave Club is marketing on PornHub.
What you can learn from this men’s grooming giant getting in bed with the world’s largest adult entertainment site.
Here’s a joke for you.
There are two types of men in this world:
Men who watch porn and men who lie about watching porn.
I’m being facetious, obviously.
But, last year in twenty-eighteen, there were 33.5 billion visits to PornHub with a daily average of 92 million (I’m not linking to the site, we all know where to find it).
That’s a mind-boggling number and when you take into consideration that the average visit duration in the United States sits at right around 10 minutes… you realize brands have a serious marketing opportunity lying scantily clad in front of them.
As tough as Russia is…
Side note: while Russians might be some tough S.O.B.’s they’re average visit duration on PornHub is in 7-minute range…
Alright, enough of that. I’m getting off-topic.
Back in 2011, Dollar Shave Club was one of the many direct-to-consumer darlings that made a killing on Facebook.
I’m not sure if you remember those days, but once upon a time if you gave a chimpanzee a laptop, a Facebook business account and some ad spend they could launch a brand to the fucking moon.
This isn’t the case anymore.
When Dollar Shave Club was bought by Unilever for an amount so gargantuan it’ll piss you off… they decided to begin diversifying their paid marketing.
Facebook was costing them an arm and a leg and their $4,000 viral video began running out of steam.
So, they began looking in the fridge, longingly, hunched over in the dead of night, searching for answers.
PornHub was the answer they found, sandwiched between a Diet Coke and some shriveled up summer sausage.
Now, that’s just nasty.
So, Dollar Shave Club began surfacing on PornHub in ridiculously clever, well-written ads like this one doubling as both an advertisement and as Harry Potter’s invisible cloak for men who might get walked in on mid-beat…
Or, this witty little write-up poking fun at the men who might be described as some of PornHub’s more loyal and enthusiastic customers…
And, I know what you’re wondering.
It’s probably the same thing I was wondering when I first got the idea for this story while sipping a nice hot cup of peppermint tea, looking out the window of my Chicago flat at the falling snow, debating whether or not me writing this article might be a sign that I, in fact, have a pornography problem…
Does marketing on PornHub work?
The short answer is yes.
The long answer is a great deal more complicated and perhaps, ambiguous.
Some gent by the name of Matt Knapp who pays the bills working as the Australian expat executive creative director of Dollar Shave Club told a random site I found called Mi3 that…
“It’s not expensive. But interestingly, the exposure that you can get and the impressions are huge. There was a strategic reason why we went there. We are very much about having guys’ backs. We like to think that we’re looking out for guys. It’s no secret that guys go there, we turn up where guys are going to be. One of the ads that we ran actually ended up from a front page of Reddit but it was a simple: “We’re here to tell you Dollar Shave Club has more than razors. This ad is also an escape hatch if someone walks in on you.” So it’s like click it, you’re out.”
All that said, let’s discuss the takeaways from what very well might be the strangest article I’ve ever written in Stranger Than Fiction.
What you can learn from Dollar Shave Club‘s love affair.
First and foremost, not all brands can market on PornHub. You’re smart. You know that.
Away luggage? No.
MailChimp? No.
AirBnb? No… actually, maybe.
Next, if you put a little extra time into what you’re writing, folks take notice.
Sometimes it goes viral.
This happened with CD Baby’s wildly successful confirmation email.
If you’re looking for a course that can teach you how to write words that sell and go viral, I have one.
Lastly, maybe it’s time to get the fuck off Facebook or hire someone that knows what the hell they’re doing.
But, I digress.
By Cole Schafer.
Stranger than fiction by Honey Copy is a curation of stories about bat shit crazy marketing ideas that have made brands some serious cheddar. If this story made your mouth water, why not let me tell you when I write the next one?
