Flattery of the Social Kind

I had a bit of thinking about where this post needed to go.
Not on my tea blog, as even a master of tea placement like myself can’t pretend it’s about tea. In fact, tea will only turn up once within this story. I’ll mark it with an asterisk so you don’t miss it.
Not on my Muses and Rants blog, because I’ve used that about once in the last two years, and it doesn’t really fit.

So Beasts of Brewdom it is: and to be fair it contains manly stuff, a little brewed beverage and bangs on about social media, which is after all how Beasts of Brewdom was invented.

So, within the social media sphere I have somewhat of a profile, and for the most part, that is all thanks to my relentless blogging and my highly abusive tweets. It also helps that I am connected to some really well known tea bloggers and a few others.
So, the ratings site Klout has me in the middle of the pack. This turns out to be quite useful.
You may remember years ago I mentioned that a company had sent me a pile of Japanese tea at one time to review.

It included genmaicha, which I have no idea what to do with, as I don’t own a horse.

So we took all the Japanese teas and turned them into bath bombs with varying degrees of success. At the time, I pointed out in my blog that with a little research, they never would have been daft enough to send me that tea.
Enter Dollar Shave Club, who have decided to send me some razors. The selection process seems to be that I have a reasonable Klout score, live in Australia and am male. Pretty reasonable odds that the product might be useful. Sure, I might have a religious ban on shaving, have alopecia or be 11 years old, but happily, none of those are true.

After treating me to an excellent and hilarious video, these guys duly sent the razors which arrived yesterday.

So this morning, I put down my cup of Lord Petersham * and put blade to face.

Well before trying the razors, I had shared the video on Facebook and Twitter. It’s hilarious. So these guys had already won. It’s cost them a few free razors.

The funny thing is, I heard the guy from Dollar Shave Club on the radio a year ago, and was impressed by what he had to say. After he finished, a guy who claimed he used to work for Gilette rang the station, and said that that company made so much money from replacement razors that they referred to the factory that makes the replacements as “the mint”.

I decide then and there to sign up.

But I was in the car at the time, and the information had dribbled out of my brain within a few minutes.

So, back to my face. A few pumps of shaving oil on my three-day growth, and out with the razor.

Was it any good.

No?

It was f***ing great, to quote their slogan.

The handle was really comfortable, the 4 blades did the trick, and the idea that I get a new one each week is really attractive. Normally, I make the last one last, if you know what I mean.

So, why blog about it?

Because this is the future. This is smart, product-driven, niche marketing. And non-religeously-beardy, non-alopecian adult Australian males is a sizable niche.

They engaged me with humour and flattery, backed it up with a great product and a unique delivery method and they won.

So why blog about it? Why not just use the free razors and quietly get on with life.

The reason is simple: a few years from now when half the products in the world are sold like this, I can smugly point to this and say: I saw this coming.

After all, I am moderately influential. Australian. Male. And closely shaved.