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Schick Personifies Shaving Irritation to Reach Singapore Men
Schick's Stop the Irrito campaign is a December 2012 film-based health and grooming initiative created by Wunderman Singapore, comprising three media assets that personify post-shave skin irritation as a named antagonist called the Irrito, appearing in relatable everyday settings across the Singapore market.
The campaign gives abstract physical discomfort a concrete identity. Rather than demonstrating product performance through clinical or technical language, Schick and Wunderman chose to dramatise the problem itself — the irritation men experience after shaving — by casting it as a disruptive presence in ordinary social situations. Two of the executions are titled The Gym and The Elevator, settings chosen for their everyday familiarity and their implicit social stakes: places where men interact at close quarters and where visible or felt discomfort carries a particular social weight. In Singapore, where proximity in lifts and fitness facilities is an unremarkable daily reality, the scenario choices carry specific cultural legibility.
The campaign's objective sits squarely in the health and grooming category, addressing a consumer pain point — shaving-related skin irritation — that competing brands frequently discuss in functional terms. By contrast, Stop the Irrito pursues an emotional and comedic register, using the Irrito character as a device to make the problem vivid and memorable before positioning Schick's product as the resolution. The campaign was published in December 2012, a period aligned with year-end grooming awareness and gift-giving cycles across the Singapore market. Wunderman Singapore served as the sole credited agency across the three-asset film campaign, which carries a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
Schick entered the Stop the Irrito campaign into one of the most competitive grooming categories globally. The men's grooming market grew approximately 8% in 2012, with razors and blades representing nearly 40% of men's grooming revenue, according to Euromonitor data cited in a summary available via Slideshare. Men's toiletries as a whole grew around 6% that same year, with razors and blades accounting for more than 70% of men's shaving sales, per the same industry overview.
Gillette dominated the competitive landscape. According to Euromonitor data, Gillette held nearly 60% of the global men's shaving market in 2012. In the United States, Gillette reportedly held more than 80% of the razor market, with Schick serving as a distant second, according to reporting via Nextbillion.net. Schick's challenge in the Singapore market, as across Asia, was therefore less about total category growth and more about capturing share from an entrenched leader with significantly greater visibility and marketing investment. A second significant competitor, BIC, held presence in the disposable segment, though the premium and system-razor space remained a Gillette-versus-Schick contest in most developed markets.
The strategic rationale for a character-based campaign in Singapore reflects this competitive pressure. Functional product claims — closeness of shave, blade count, lubrication strips — were terrain where Gillette's marketing infrastructure made direct comparison difficult. By shifting the conversation toward the problem of irritation rather than the mechanics of shaving, Wunderman Singapore created a category frame that Schick could plausibly own. The Irrito device is a strategy of category reframing: define the enemy as irritation itself, then position Schick as the brand that eliminates it. In a compact urban market like Singapore, where broadcast and digital reach is concentrated, a memorable character-led approach carries efficiency advantages.
Creative Director Keith Tan and Art Director Etienne Lesourd led the creative execution of Stop the Irrito for Wunderman Singapore. The campaign's central craft decision — to embody shaving irritation as a physical character named the Irrito — is its most distinctive structural choice, borrowing from a tradition of personified antagonists in consumer health advertising while applying it to a grooming context where competitors typically relied on demonstration-led formats.
The two named executions, The Gym and The Elevator, establish the Irrito across distinct social environments. The Gym scenario places the protagonist in a fitness setting, a context where physical discomfort and social visibility intersect naturally and where men's grooming choices have visible consequences. The Elevator scenario exploits the compressed, unavoidable social proximity of a lift — a scenario with particular resonance in Singapore's high-density urban environment, where lifts are a daily shared experience across residential and commercial buildings. Both settings are economical in their logic: they require minimal exposition, they establish stakes immediately, and they allow the Irrito character to generate situation comedy without extensive narrative setup.
The choice of film as the primary medium suits the campaign's comedic and character-driven ambitions. Static formats cannot sustain a personified antagonist across a narrative arc; film allows timing, reaction, and resolution to do the persuasive work. Three media assets across the campaign suggest a planned variety of contexts rather than a single hero film. Additional production credits beyond Keith Tan and Art Director Etienne Lesourd are not publicly documented in available campaign records. The campaign was published in December 2012 in Singapore, and no trade press production coverage has been identified across Campaign, Ad Age, or Adweek, per research conducted via Apify and confirmed by Clapboard's editorial review.
No verified performance data for the Stop the Irrito campaign is publicly available. No results have been documented in Campaign, Ad Age, Adweek, The Drum, or Contagious, and no social media discussion has been identified on the platforms reviewed, according to research conducted via Apify and Clapboard's own editorial archive. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting a mid-range assessment of the work's creative and strategic execution as archived.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates meaningful effectiveness logic. The Irrito character provides a mnemonic anchor — a named, embodied representation of the consumer problem — that is more memorable than a clinical description of post-shave skin irritation. Character-based creative tends to perform well in unaided brand recall contexts, particularly when the antagonist is both visually distinctive and behaviourally consistent across executions. The two-scenario approach across The Gym and The Elevator broadens situational relevance without diluting the core message.
Schick's brand lineage adds context. Jacob Schick founded the company in 1926, according to Encyclopedia.com, and Energizer acquired Schick in 2003 for 930 million US dollars, as documented by Encyclopedia.com. The brand therefore entered the Singapore market in 2012 with significant corporate backing but competing against Gillette's entrenched share. In that context, a campaign designed to reframe the category problem — positioning irritation as the enemy rather than engaging in blade-count comparisons — represents a structurally sound approach for a challenger brand operating in a concentrated urban market like Singapore. The absence of awards recognition across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, and the Clios limits the campaign's independently verifiable creative standing.
Stop the Irrito is a 2012 Schick film campaign created by Wunderman Singapore. It personifies post-shave skin irritation as a character called the Irrito, appearing in everyday settings including a gym and an elevator. The campaign ran in Singapore in December 2012 and comprises three film assets designed to dramatise shaving irritation before positioning Schick as the solution.
Wunderman Singapore created the Stop the Irrito campaign for Schick. Creative Director Keith Tan and Art Director Etienne Lesourd led the work. The campaign was published in December 2012 in Singapore across three film executions, with no additional production credits publicly documented in available campaign records.
The Gym and The Elevator are two of the three named film executions in Schick's Stop the Irrito campaign. Each places the Irrito character — a personified representation of shaving irritation — in a distinct everyday social setting. Both scenarios were chosen for their cultural familiarity and social stakes within the Singapore market.
No verified awards data for Stop the Irrito has been found. Research confirmed no recognition across Cannes Lions, Effies, The One Show, D&AD, or the Clios. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, representing a mid-range creative and strategic assessment based on Clapboard's editorial archive methodology.
Schick faced dominant competitor Gillette, which held nearly 60% of the global men's shaving market in 2012 according to Euromonitor data. Personifying shaving irritation as the Irrito allowed Wunderman Singapore to reframe the category problem rather than compete on functional claims, a structurally sound challenger strategy for a concentrated urban market like Singapore.
Wunderman Singapore used film as the primary medium for Schick's Stop the Irrito campaign. Film was suited to the campaign's character-driven and comedic approach, allowing the Irrito antagonist to function across narrative arcs with timing and resolution. Three media assets were produced in total for the December 2012 Singapore campaign.
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