Among November’s many holiday traditions are the annual Movember and No Shave November challenges, which rally men to grow (and women to support) beards and mustaches throughout the month of November to raise funds and awareness for men’s health issues.

But for companies like Harry’s Grooming and Dollar Shave Club, the annual Movember movement poses an interesting challenge. When your business model is built upon people buying razors, what’s a brand to do during when not shaving is in style?

To find out, we used our competitive intelligence platform to track the marketing content from Harry’s Grooming, Dollar Shave Club, 800Razors, Classic Shaving, Dorco, Harry’s Grooming, Schick, and Shave Mob throughout this year’s No Shave November.

Here are some of the most effective content strategies implemented by razor brands to keep their audiences engaged this November.

The “If You Can’t Join Them, Beat Them” Strategy

Not shaving? Not a problem for Gillette. Instead of trying to battle Movember’s momentum, Gillette took to Twitter with a hashtag of their own — #keepinnovating — to celebrate the 110th anniversary of their first razor patent on November 15th.

Gillette’s #keepinnovating hashtag outperformed all other hashtags used by their competitors in the month of November, garnering 7.8X more retweets than their average tweet!

The results? Thanks to the #keepinnovating campaign, Gillette saw a huge spike in Twitter followers. Notice the spike on November 15th in the graph of Gillette’s Twitter followers below:

The Giveaway Strategy

Similar to Gillette, Dorco decided to ignore Movemeber and approach November as a glass half full of marketing opportunities. ‘Tis the holiday season, after all!

On Facebook, for example, Dorco saw major spikes in their average interactions per post by offering exclusive discounts via content for a Veteran’s Day sale on November 11th, and an early Cyber Monday sale on November 30th.

In fact, this Veteran’s Day Facebook post from Dorco saw 4.6 thousand interactions, 11.47 times their average interactions per Facebook post.

The results of these opportunistic content strategies? Growth in Dorco’s Facebook following picked up throughout the latter half of November.

The “Jump On The Bandwagon” Strategy

Unlike Gillette and Dorco, Harry’s Grooming decided to simply embrace Movember and support the men’s health causes it champions. Thanks to their retweet of TEDTalks’ ode to Movember on November 22nd, Harry’s saw a huge spike in average retweets per tweet.

By showing their Movember support, Harry’s saw 15.78X more retweets than their average tweet.

Conclusion

What can marketers’ learn from Gillete, Dorco, and Harry’s Grooming? Being opportunistic with content marketing pays off. By following trending content in their market segments, these brands discovered the topics and tactics that engaged their audiences. The result was more compelling content that built significant brand awareness and audience engagement, in spite of No Shave November.