Gillette Back (Hairless?) Chinese eSports Stars To Reframe Market Shrinkage

The Procter & Gamble (P&G) brand has rolled up five Honor of Kings professional players from across China to form a dream team using the same formula as when they created the Gillette Champions cabal of Tiger, Roger and Thierry about a decade ago.

The new famous five include:

• Chen “CatGod” Zhengzheng, part of eSports organisation eStarPro
• Peng “Fly” Yunfei (QGhappy)
  • Apart from appearing in a recent promotional poster on Gillette’s official Weibo account as well as its Jingdong online store, Peng Yunfei has also starred in a Gillette digital commercial on WeChat’s My Moment
• Xia “Hurt” Shengqin (QGhappy)
• Xu “6.6” Yiran
• Xu “YiNuo” Bicheng, of Black Ananas (BA)

The problem is – with their Asian genes – none of them look as though they are regular shavers. And yet Gillette is rolling them out across the board as champions of shaving,  promoting their latest suite of razorware. Yes, eSports is the platform du jour – and China is a logical market to go after with its size and burgeoning gaming community – but Gillette is surely missing the authenticity mark by some distance here.

According to ASN data, Gillette has a mere 0.3% share for the FMCG: Cosmetics & Toiletries category, spending almost US$7.5m in the Asia Sponsorship market – particularly in China (59.4%) and India (40.6%) – since Q316. Furthermore, its average quarterly investments have eased by 17% from almost US$3m to US$2.5m in that period, and they are projected to have a quiet first half of 2019. Aside from eSports, its other sponsorships are sporadic and seem to focus on niche platforms like Kabaddi in India.

Roger Federer, Thierry Henry and Tiger Woods pose for Gillette in 2009

Gillette still holds an overwhelming market share of 54% of the ‘cartridge’ razor market (Dec 2018), but its dominance has been eroded from the 70% share it held in 2010. It’s not that the competition is stealing share; it’s the fact that the pie is shrinking. Less people are caring about personal grooming. And as the linked report declares very succinctly, when capitalism meets a shrinking market, it will do everything it can to prevent the shrink… which means that the counter-tactics become exaggerated and oft-times bizarre. And this partnership in China, smells very bizarre.

For insights into the global ~US$20b shaving market – including market shares, classifications etc – click here for this 3rd party report.