U-M Team's "Manscaping" Wins P&G Marketing Prize
Dan Sewell
Issue date: 3/10/08 Section: Features
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The students, who dubbed their campaign "Manscaping America, One College Campus at a Time," earned $40,000. Runner-up teams from Michigan and Indiana University each won $5,000 after making presentations at P&G's Cincinnati headquarters to judges including Jim Stengel, global marketing officer for the nation's biggest advertiser. The finalists were chosen from nearly 300 entries.
P&G launched the "Create a Buzz for Braun" competition on business-school campuses last September for it Braun brand, which makes electric shavers and other household products. Students could develop a marketing plan targeting college males for either Braun's Pulsonic shaver or for what will be a new Braun product, a male body groomer for back, underarm, and other below-the-neck hair. The finalists all worked on body groomer marketing.
The winners - Emily Hoffman, a Cleveland native; Karima Holland, of Oakland, Calif.; Mihira Patel, of Farmington Hills and Holly Sharp, of Grand Rapids - suggested online contests and promotions and a "Manscaping" campus comedy tour. They developed their plan after talking to some 150 college males about body hair issues, their media habits and other information.
"We're not men, so we stepped back and let them do the talking," Patel said. The women, who attend the Ross School of Business at Michigan, said they were surprised that men not only weren't embarrassed to talk about body hair, but that students sought them out when word spread of their project.
"Guys are really an interesting breed," Sharp said.
A one-woman team from Michigan and two men from Indiana were the runners-up.
Before announcing the winner, the judges gave the teams feedback, including criticism, "just like American Idol," joked Bracken Darrell, global president of Braun, a brand P&G obtained in its 2005 Gillette acquisition.
"You can expect to see something you came up with in the market somewhere," Darrell told the competitors. "There was a lot of good stuff."
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