In a sea of men’s grooming sameness, Schick Xtreme needed to stand for more than just price and promotion, so we looked to lend Schick’s shaving expertise to a good cause. We discovered the St. Baldrick’s Foundation, an organization that hosts head-shaving events to raise money for childhood cancer treatment and research, but with Covid-19 canceling all of St. Baldrick’s in-person events indefinitely, critical fundraising came to a halt. Schick Xtreme, a brand known for its razor innovations, saw a unique opportunity to help St. Baldrick’s reimagine their head-shaving events and keep the donations flowing.
STRATEGY & EXECUTION
Since in-person events weren’t possible, we looked into ways our millennial target donates digitally. We found that over 60 percent of Americans 18-29 play video games often, and on average donate $29 a month on Twitch to support the causes they care about. This made us wonder, how can we bring head-shaving to the Twitch community in an authentic and engaging way?
Our idea was simple: create a video game of our own. Introducing Shave The Day, a one-of-kind mobile game where Schick turns players’ points into real donations to St. Baldrick’s to help fight childhood cancer.
In the game, players race to shave the heads of avatars in the game using a razor hoverboard. The more heads players successfully shave, the more “bald bucks” (points) they accrue. At the end of the game, Schick turns their bald bucks into real donations to St. Baldrick’s.
To inspire the most donations possible, we designed Shave The Day with an “endless runner” style gaming mechanic (similar to the popular cellphone game, Temple Run). This incited people to play over and over again to beat their own score while raising more money in the process.
We harnessed the power of the Twitch community to launch Shave The Day. We teamed up with top streamers, inviting them to play our game live and collect donations from fans. Once they reached their fundraising goals, streamers shaved their own heads live using Xtreme razors, raising even more money and awareness for the cause.
OUTCOME
In the end, Shave The Day was truly a game-changer for St. Baldrick’s and their fight against childhood cancer.
- To date, Shave The Day was streamed for more than 290,000 hours on Twitch
- Over 1.7 million virtual heads were shaved by players
- Shave The Day is on track to reach our $250,000 donation goal
- Drove a 54% increase in purchase intent of Schick Xtreme razors
- Lifted Schick Xtreme’s brand relevance 53%
- Increased the brand’s likeability 64%