There’s a new company that’s promising a great shave for only a few bucks a month. It’s called Dollar Shave Club, and the concept is intriguing. You pay a small monthly fee for razor blades sent straight to your door. The company even sends you the razor for free. There’s three blade options, and they all seem like they’d do the job. So is this the new best option for men looking for a good shave? We’ll see about that.

If you’re currently shaving with a Fusion 17-blade phenom or whatever they’re called, you pay way too much for blades. You’re the guy Dollar Shave Club is going after because it really will save you money. Plus if you still get your blades at the grocery store, you will save yourself a trip.

But the Dollar Shave Club website talks about how shaving used to be. You know, how your grandpa shaved. Like the crop of other websites these days that glorify the manly generations past, Dollar Shave Club seems to be advocating a return to simpler times when razors didn’t vibrate. So it’s strange that the blade offerings look so similar to the overpriced Fusion blades. Is this really a turn back in time or an attempt to profit from our need to feel more manly? After all, your grandpa didn’t shave with six blades. He shaved with one. It was either a straight razor like the barber used, or a double edge safety razor.

That doesn’t have a lot to do with my little savings analysis, but I mention it to illustrate that a man who really shaves like his grandfather is probably spending even less that Dollar Shave Club charges. Let’s say Gentleman ‘A’ shaves with a double edge safety razor, badger hair brush, and shave soap. Gentleman ‘B’ shaves with Dollar Shave Club blades, badger hair brush, and shave soap. (I suppose Gentleman B could be using shave cream in a can, but let’s say both men want the grandfather-esque wet shaving experience) Who will spend more money?

In a moment of excel nerdiness, I put together a spreadsheet that showed 5 years of costs for Gentlemen A and B. We won’t count the cost of the shave soap and brush, since both men have to make those purchases. Here’s what I found:

Gentleman A upfront costs – Merkur Razor, approx. $31.00 on Amazon or West Coast Shaving

Gentleman B upfront costs – none

Gentleman A blades –  50 Feather blades for double edge safety razor, approx. $21.47 on Amazon > converted into monthly cost for 5 blades, $1.29 per month

Gentleman B blades – 5 Dollar Shave Club blades for $1 per month + $2 shipping > $3 monthly cost

Cost at the end of year 1:

Gentleman A – $46.46 ($31.00 + 12 months of blades at $1.29 per month)

Gentleman B – $36.00 ($3 per month)

Cost at the end of year 2:

Gentleman A – $61.92

Gentleman B – $72.00

(Dollar Shave Club started costing more money in month 19)

Cost at the end of year 3:

Gentleman A – $77.38

Gentleman B- $108.00

Cost at the end of year 4:

Gentleman A – $92.84

Gentleman B – $144.00

Cost at the end of year 5:

Gentleman A – $108.29

Gentleman B – $180.00

Now keep in mind that Gentleman B is using Dollar Shave Club’s most inexpensive blade, “The Humble Twin”. “The 4x” would cost $360 at the end of 5 years and “The Executive” would cost $540 at the end of 5 years.

So while Dollar Shave Club might be a good idea for some, it’s not the cheapest or best way to shave. You can get an equal or better shave for a lot less money (as long as you hold out for at least 19 months).

*Yes, ok, Gentleman A is me. I did this to compare my shaving costs with DSC. My costs assume that you have Amazon prime and can get free shipping. But who doesn’t have prime these days?

In my humble opinion, there are a lot of ugly ways to listen to music out there. In the race for best streaming/free/subscription music service, why are so many of the players so unattractive? Is visual experience not an important enough part of music to warrant a little effort from some of the big players? Apparently not at this point, with one possible exception. More services should take a design/user experience lesson from the folks at Microsoft who are responsible for the Zune software. I may be be biased as it is my listening software of choice, but the design has actually encouraged me to engage more in the experience. While some services are relegated to the desktop background, I proudly display this interface for the design gem that it is.

Anything to be learned from this? Yes. Just because music is primarily an auditory experience, that doesn’t mean a lot of effort shouldn’t be put into the the accompanying visual experience. Zune lacks in a few areas, but as a well designed music discovery experience, I’ve yet to find a more engaging alternative.

I highly recommend you bookmark Peter Clarke’s article entitled 5 Branding Commandments for the Post-Crash Economy. I’ve referred back to it several times since he wrote it, and I see something new each time. What’s really fun is to pay attention to which companies are getting it right and examine what they’ve done. My favorite burrito maker, EVOL Burritos, is getting it right, and here’s why.

EVOL’s website is outstanding. Pick a burrito and you’ll see an oversized product image, a few key nutritional facts (70% Organic • 16g Protein • 4g Fiber • Net Wt. 6oz), and a short description. Roll over a keyword, black beans for example, and you get a pop-up description. They wisely choose not to clutter up the page with text – instead they made it more engaging and kept it clean. It’s simple and to the point. And it looks good.

On an EVOL burrito package, you are told to visit the website for food sourcing information. What?? A food company wants us to know where the ingredients came from? On the burrito page, you see links to the company’s websites from which EVOL sourced. I loved this the first time I saw it. More companies are doing it, but at a typical grocery store, it’s painfully obvious how many do not. As I’m seeing more examples of transparency like this, it will be harder to go back to brands that haven’t caught on.

EVOL’s sourcing information and its no-GMO and no-RBST disclosures also make for a very responsible company. Add green manufacturing and some good partnerships to that mix and I get even more impressed. It’s great that the burritos are delicious – it’s even better that the company is trying to make the world a better place.

I flat out like EVOL’s product, website, and company. We deserve more from companies, as Clarke’s article explains so well. I hope we start to see more companies concerned enough to make a difference, and better yet, who know how to market that difference in a nice package and presentation. EVOL’s packaging caught my eye first, then it drove me to the website where I learned that this company is much more.

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Think about the very first point of contact most customers will have with your company. It will be online, but it probably won’t be your website. It will be the search listing that appears when the customer searches for your company in Google. You probably know this, but what are you doing to made that first exposure a good one?

Many companies assume that because all is well on their website, their search listing will convey the right things. But unless you’ve made an effort to optimize your site’s description, Google may be deciding for you what to show to customers. For example, if your website is about water fountains and you haven’t inserted water fountain keywords in your description tag, Google will pull from other areas on your website to create a snippet of text when someone searches on water fountains. You may or may not like what it picks.

If you want your search listing to really speak to people, then first insert your most important keywords and a good call to action in your description tag. If you do that, Google will most likely use that as the text for the search listing. If Google feels that some other text on your site is more relevant to the searcher’s search, you can guide it to other parts of your page by inserting more keywords there too. The more you optimize content to what searchers are looking for, the more likely your search listing will show something polished instead of some random piece of text that does nothing for you.

First touches are important, and in the online marketing world, it just takes a little digging into website code to polish your presentation.

Image credit to Victoria Pickering

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I enjoy paying attention to packaging. A smart presentation will tell you a lot about a product when there’s no time for closer examination. Smart marketers know this.

I was grocery shopping last week when I stumbled upon a package that grabbed my attention (It’s that soap bottle up there). What would you assume about this product? When I saw it, I first thought natural. Then I thought clean. Without picking it up, I guessed it was an organic soap brand, maybe a little pricier than the rest. I’m ok at this guessing game, but this time I was right. Looking into their website, I found that it’s a natural personal care brand. The Method website does a great job of supporting the natural image with it’s simple and clean layout.

With so many other products competing for my attention, this one succeeded by being different and conveying an idea. If a brand has a message that separates it from the crowd, the packaging should show it. I think if a soap bottle can do it, any product can.