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Old 12-04-2003, 07:44 PM   #9 (permalink)
ARTelevision
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Remington is just jumping into the fray here. The wild claims made by the big guns in shaving technology have opened the doors for ad agencies to do what they do best - mess with our minds by messing with our language.

Here's a couple of items from the annals of razor-ology that have more to do with splitting hairs than actually cutting them off:

...........

Sharp words - and lawsuits - exchanged as razor makers do battle

October 16, 2003

In a very old Gillette plant on the South Side of Boston, a fairly young guy is showing off some very new technologies.

Craig Provost, 27, a senior industrial designer, is using a joystick to pull up a curve here, flatten one there and otherwise transform a virtual block of clay on his laptop screen into a razor.

When he's satisfied, he sends the digital model to another machine, which uses it as a blueprint to make a hard plastic version.

"In just a few days, you can try out any number of different designs, see how they look and feel in your hands," Provost said.

Now it is the turn of Colin Clipstone, 60, director of blade and razor technology.

His camera can capture, in very slow motion, the movement of a blade slicing a human hair that is sprouting from a block of synthetic skin.

The device also records the amount of force the blade applies, how far the hair bends before the blade slices through it and how sharp an angle is left on the stubble.

The sharper the angle, the rougher the stubble, so the machine gives a good indication of how different razors perform.

"We'll put forth a theory - say, that a different blade coating or cutting speed gives a closer shave - and the machine can show if we're right," Clipstone said.

The men are demonstrating the techniques using existing Gillette razors such as the Sensor3, the Mach3 and the Mach3 Turbo.

But in the laboratory down the hall - a room strictly off limits to curious outsiders - Gillette researchers are using the same machines, and many others, to fine-tune a new razor that Peter Hoffman, head of the company's shaving group, says will pretty much make all existing razors - including Gillette's - obsolete.

He had better be right. For most of its 102-year corporate life, Gillette was the undisputed leader in razor blades, one of the most profitable consumer products in the world.

Its formula was simple: it made good razors, sold them cheap and reaped profits - year in, year out - from the replacement blades that loyal customers kept buying. Sure, there were competitors, but none that caused much consternation.

Until now.

Gillette is embroiled in a nasty battle with Schick-Wilkinson Sword, which last month introduced the Quattro, a four-blade shaving system (as sets of non-disposable razors with disposable blades are called).

This is no gentleman's duel. Gillette has sued Schick for patent infringement, saying that the positioning of Quattro's four blades is a knockoff of the Mach3's three-blade design.

Schick, in turn, has sued Gillette for false advertising, saying that the stellar performance of Schick's Quattro and its Xtreme3 disposable gives the lie to Gillette's claims that its razors provide the world's best shave.

"This is the first credible threat that Gillette has faced in the high-margin razor system business," said Alison Kerivan, an analyst at the investment firm David L. Babson.

The battling claims are not confined to court. Mr. Hoffman says that sales of Gillette's Venus razor system for women increased steadily even after Intuition, a Schick product, hit the market last northern spring.

Joseph Lynch, Schick's president, says that Intuition is gaining more ground all the time.

Edward DeGraan, Gillette's president, contends that Gillette's manufacturing technology gives it a competitive edge.

Hoffman says that an independent firm is now conducting a consumer comparison test between the Quattro and the Mach3 Turbo, and that the Mach3 Turbo is sure to win.

Not surprisingly, Schick's tests have yielded the opposite conclusion.

The tests "have provided us with the backing for several claims we can make in future ads", said Alvin Robertson, Schick's chief marketing officer.

This is war, and Gillette is firing as many types of ammunition as it can.

It has stepped up the number of Mach3 Turbo razors it sends to consumers who do not now use a Gillette product.

Gillette just introduced Mach3 Turbo Champion, a bright red and black razor that, not at all by coincidence, is packaged to look like a high-speed sports car and is clearly aimed at a young, macho type of guy.

And, of course, there's that mysterious new razor, the one that's supposed to make all others irrelevant, being developed in the South Boston lab.

It is no gross exaggeration to say that Gillette's future is at stake.

Razor systems are one of the few product lines in which the most expensive - and highest-margin - products are the ones whose sales grow the fastest.

Moreover, shavers are a loyal bunch, and all the data indicate that the brand that people use in their youth is usually the brand they use through their dotage.

The New York Times

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/...917475310.html

.............

The razor wars - not-too-sharp logic
By Ron Charles
Full-page ads in national newspapers (though, alas, not this one) have been heralding the advent of the Quattro razor.

"Two blades are better than one, and three blades are better than two," the ad reasoned in the logic of American consumption. "That's as good as it gets, right? WRONG."

"On September 22," the razormaker, Schick,intoned with historical gravitas, "the world's first four-bladed razor arrives in stores."

Surely, future generations will ask themselves, "Where were you on September 22?" And if Schick has its way, half of us will answer, "I was scraping my face with the best dang razor ever!"

But not if Gillette has anything to say about it. The world's largest razormaker is suing Schick, the world's fastest- growing razormaker, to cut the new Quattro down even before it sprouts in grocery stores.

Gillette claims this new four-blade razor illegally infringes on its patent for the Mach3. That's the three-blade razor you've seen on TV: A jet fighter disintegrates in flight, but the pilot, wearing only a towel, is miraculously deposited in the bathroom where he and an attractive woman admire his chin.

I have not tried the Quattro razor yet, but I can report that using the Mach3 has not led me to experience anything like what I saw in the TV ad. Perhaps it only works for fighter pilots.

Or maybe I just need more blades. Surely, as Gillette and Schick continue to battle for dominance in the $6 billion razor market, their consumer labs will find more improvements. If "four blades precisely synchronized to maintain optimum contact with the skin" are better than three are better than two are better than one, then, really, the sky's the limit.

Why not imagine a razor with two- or three-dozen blades, an instrument so carefully synchronized and calibrated that the first blade looks for the hair, the second blade evaluates the hair, the third blade announces your intention to cut the hair in the style of a preselected Hollywood heartthrob ... the 18th blade bleaches the root ... the 27th blade massages the follicle ....

Schick's website (who surfs to such pages?) claims that the handle of its new razor has been "ergonomically designed for advanced precision, control and maneuverability."That's more than I ask of my car. (But, then again, I'm not a fighter pilot.)

The cutthroat battle between Gillette and Schick may continue for years, but is it any wonder that American marketing has already conquered the world more quickly and more completely than the American military? Who can resist such unbounded optimism, such flamboyant enthusiasm? People of all nations, give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning for the closest shave ever!

• Ron Charles is the Monitor's book editor.

Christian Science Monitor:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0922/p09s01-coop.html
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