Jorge the Hot Waxing Coach

Insight

As Veet was about to launch its new hot waxing system "Easy Wax" - a product for leg waxing at home - in Germany, the brand was facing the challenge of Germany being a "shaving market" with 90% of women shaving their legs instead of waxing:

Almost all women think waxing is too painful (as they know from cold waxing systems) and are afraid of trying it at home. It was the first time ever for any brand to launch a hot waxing system. So the challenge was to "reduce German women's fear of the waxing pain". To address this challenge, Initiative needed to find a well-known endorser who is credible and has the expertise to coach German women on how easily the product works. The problem: female celebrities lack credibility because no one would believe any female celeb to wax her legs at home.

Strategy

Approximately 90% of German women are afraid of the pain when think of waxing their legs and are sceptical when it comes to waxing products. As Veet's "Easy Wax" was a totally new product for the German market and needed to be explained to the target audience (women, aged 20-29) Initiative chose an educative approach. In order to reduce fear it was crucial to "teach" them every single aspect of a "hot waxing at home" session: the right length of the hair, the right temperature of the wax, the right usage of the stripes, etc.

So the main idea of the campaign was to produce and to spread entertaining educational videos that show the products functionality and how easy they were to use. For a credible communication the agency decided not to use a female testimonial but a male celebrity instead. A male celebrity with coaching competence which women are relying on and who knows how a woman's leg should look: Jorge Gonzales, catwalk coach of the prime time TV show "Germany's Next Top Model by Heidi Klum".

Jorge gained enormous popularity by his extravagant appearances and his eccentric dresses, even becoming the "secret star" of Germany's Next Top Model (FAZ, German Newspaper). Is it too daring to use a male testimonial who is incredibly sympathetic, fun to watch and who likes to wear female dresses for a reliable product? Of course not! It's the perfect fit!

Initiative launched four episodes of its educational video, one each week, on the Veet Facebook page and promoted the videos on affine websites and on TV in order to reach the majority of the target audience. A sampling of informational flyers with QR codes brought Jorge, Veet and the videos to potential consumers right at the point of purchase.

Execution

After each regular Veet commercial on TV, a tag on with Jorge Gonzales invited the target audience to visit him on Facebook. Additionally, the agency chose key words like "legs", "beautiful" and "skin" on affine websites and placed in-text ads. Whenever a user went over the link, a teaser video popped up and led to the Facebook page. On Facebook "Jorge's World" spread viral by the implementation of the "Chica App": Users were able to take their picture with their beloved Jorge and shared the pictures with their friends.

Additionally, passing out coupons by placing QR codes on teletext pages enticed the target audience to go into the store, buy the product and to try it at home. Finally, informational flyers reached the 20-29-year-old female targets pinpoint via samplings on German campuses and at the point of sale. These flyers featured QR codes which linked to the videos and brought Jorge's educational coaching to our target audience right before they made the decision to buy Veet Easy Wax.

Results

+332% sales uplift after launching the educational campaign
+457% increase of requests on Google
9% CTR for the in-text ads
5.980 clicks on the landing page after the QR code was scanned
3.901 downloaded coupons with a 65% conversion rate
The video tab recorded over 2,000 monthly active women
Over 600 pictures got shared each month