How Gillette Turned Shaving Into a Music Video with Shave Forth
Gillette's "Shave Forth ft. Dr. Lektroluv & DJs from Mars" is a June 2015 digital campaign produced by Grey for the United States market, blending electronic music performance with personal care advertising to reach younger male consumers through a music-video format rather than a conventional product demonstration.
The campaign operates at an unlikely intersection. Gillette, one of the most recognisable names in men's personal care, partnered with the Belgian DJ and producer Dr. Lektroluv and the Italian electronic duo DJs from Mars to produce what functions as a fully realised music video built around the act of shaving. Rather than position the razor as a functional tool, the creative frames grooming as an expression of energy, style, and confidence — values borrowed directly from electronic music culture. In the United States, where the men's grooming category was intensifying in both competition and consumer sophistication, the approach represented a deliberate departure from the brand's heritage advertising grammar.
The campaign sits within Gillette's long-running "The Best a Man Can Get" platform, functioning as a tactical digital activation rather than a wholesale brand repositioning. Its single archived media asset — a music video — was distributed through digital channels, reflecting a broader industry shift toward content that earns attention rather than buying it through interruption. James McPherson, SVP Associate Director of Film Production, is credited as the production lead on the project. The Clapboard Score for Shave Forth stands at 57 out of 100, indicating a campaign that achieves creative distinction in its format choice while leaving measurable business impact difficult to establish from public record.
Gillette identified a clear strategic tension in the United States personal care market in 2015. The brand faced growing pressure from direct-to-consumer challengers, most visibly Dollar Shave Club and Harry's, both of which had built significant consumer awareness by positioning themselves as the anti-establishment alternative to legacy razor brands. Dollar Shave Club, founded in 2011, had demonstrated that younger male consumers in the US were willing to defect from familiar brand relationships when a competitor offered both price relief and a more culturally fluent tone of voice. Against that backdrop, Shave Forth reads as Gillette's attempt to reclaim cultural relevance through content rather than price.
The strategic rationale connects to a well-documented shift in how personal care brands were communicating with men in the mid-2010s. Research from the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto identifies how men's grooming advertising had historically anchored product utility to conventional masculine identity markers, noting that campaigns like Gillette's 2013 Fusion ProGlide Styler spot featuring Kate Upton explicitly linked shaving to traditional masculinity and heterosexual appeal. Shave Forth moves away from that register. Electronic music culture, with its global reach and its associations with self-expression and hedonism rather than conformity, offered Gillette a way to signal modernity without abandoning the aspiration embedded in its core platform.
The global men's shaving products market was valued at approximately 14.9 billion US dollars in 2015, according to market research cited by Clapboard. Within that context, the United States represented one of the category's most competitive and advertising-saturated geographies, making differentiation through creative format a rational, if risky, strategic choice. By commissioning a piece of content that could plausibly circulate as entertainment rather than advertising, Grey constructed a campaign designed to outperform conventional paid media on a per-impression basis.
Hiro Murai directed Shave Forth, as documented by shots.net. At the time of the campaign's June 2015 release, Murai was building a reputation as one of the most visually distinctive directors working across music videos and commercial production, a reputation that would expand considerably in subsequent years through his work on television. His involvement signals that Gillette and Grey were committed to treating the film as a genuine creative production rather than a branded content afterthought.
The music at the centre of the campaign was produced through a collaboration between Dr. Lektroluv, DJs from Mars, Morgan Visconti, and Gareth Williams, as documented by shots.net. Dr. Lektroluv, the Belgian electronic artist and performer known for his elaborate stage persona, and DJs from Mars, the Italian production and remix duo with an established international profile, brought authentic electronic music credentials to a project that required the music to function independently as well as in service of the brand. The result is a track and visual that borrow the aesthetic vocabulary of festival-era electronic music without obvious product-placement awkwardness.
Production was handled by Ninja, with Jason Colon serving as producer and Danielle Hinde and Rana Martin as executive producers, per shots.net. The edit was completed by Akiko Iwakawa, also credited as Akiko Iwakawa-Grieve in shots.net, at Cut+Run. Post-production and visual effects were delivered by The Mill, with Adam Isidore as VFX executive producer and Katie Kolombatovich as VFX producer. Colourist Fergus McCall shaped the film's final visual texture, while sound design and mixing were handled by Philip Loeb at Heard City. The depth of this production roster — spanning a recognised director, a specialist editorial house, and one of the industry's most prominent VFX companies — signals an investment in craft that sits well above the typical threshold for digital-only activations in the personal care category in the United States.
No verified performance data for Shave Forth ft. Dr. Lektroluv & DJs from Mars is publicly available. No campaign-specific sales lift, market-share movement, view counts, or engagement metrics have been confirmed through Gillette, Grey, or independent measurement sources. The campaign did not receive formal recognition from Cannes Lions, the Effie Awards, the One Show, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the Webby Awards, or WARC's effectiveness databases.
What is documented is editorial recognition from SHOOT magazine, which included the Shave Forth track in its 2015 Top 5 Music Tracks list, as reported by shots.net. This is an editorial distinction rather than a competitive award, but it confirms that the campaign's music production was noticed by industry observers covering production craft, which is consistent with the calibre of talent assembled for the project.
Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness argument rests on its format logic. A music video co-created with credible electronic music artists is designed to earn organic distribution in environments — social platforms, music blogs, fan communities — where conventional advertising cannot travel. In the United States personal care market of 2015, where Gillette was defending category leadership against fast-moving direct-to-consumer competitors, content that could function as entertainment carried a multiplier effect that a standard pre-roll unit could not replicate. The Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100 reflects a campaign that executes its creative concept with genuine production craft and a coherent cultural strategy, while the absence of documented business outcomes limits the case for broader effectiveness.
Shave Forth is a June 2015 digital campaign created by Grey for Gillette in the United States. It takes the form of a music video featuring electronic artists Dr. Lektroluv and DJs from Mars, using the energy of electronic music culture to reframe shaving as an act of self-expression rather than routine grooming.
Hiro Murai directed Shave Forth for Gillette, as documented by shots.net. Murai worked with production company Ninja and a full post-production team including editor Akiko Iwakawa at Cut+Run and visual effects from The Mill, bringing a level of craft uncommon in personal care digital campaigns of that period.
Dr. Lektroluv is a Belgian electronic artist and DJ known for a distinctive stage persona. DJs from Mars are an Italian electronic production and remix duo with international recognition. Gillette and Grey recruited both acts to bring authentic electronic music credibility to the campaign, targeting younger US male consumers who responded to that cultural register.
Shave Forth received no formal awards from Cannes Lions, the Effies, D&AD, the Clio Awards, the One Show, the Webby Awards, or WARC. SHOOT magazine included the campaign's music track in its 2015 Top 5 Music Tracks editorial list, as reported by shots.net, which represents industry recognition of its production quality.
Shave Forth is a tactical digital activation within Gillette's long-running "The Best a Man Can Get" platform rather than a new brand direction. The larger strategic shift for Gillette came later with the 2019 "The Best Men Can Be" campaign, which addressed masculinity directly and generated significantly wider public and industry debate.
Gillette's Shave Forth campaign received a Clapboard Score of 57 out of 100. The score reflects strong creative ambition and genuine production craft — particularly in its direction, music production, and post-production — balanced against the absence of publicly verified business performance data from the United States market.
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