Hair Care Marketing 101
By Danny DeWinter
Please address comments to: dannydewinter@yahoo.com
Let's get one thing straight, right from the beginning. It was never about the money. Oh, hell I made a bundle of money, you can't even begin to imagine how much. My real chuckle was sticking it to these self-righteous, holier than thou pricks that seem to get all the media coverage these days. You know the ones; hypocritical assholes that want to tell everyone what to do all the time, while they indulge in their perversions with other people's money. They especially want to stop any notion that children can be sexual beings. Their obviously idiots. Sorry about the ranting, on with the story.
I own the beauty products company that got all the press recently. You probably know the one, if not, I'll refresh your memory. Three and a half years ago we were nearly bust, what with the economy and all. The product categories were over full and market share was spread pretty thin. Everything was being made overseas for pennies and it seemed that no one cared much about brand loyalty. I was ready to just board it up and retire when the company got a letter of complaint from a mom about one of our hair brushes. It was a cheap dime store product and the secretary that handles my mail usually just sends a replacement with an apology letter, so I didn't even know why it was on my desk. It might have been just a prank or someone at the company thought I'd get a laugh out of it. This mom wrote to say that she found her ten year old son, on the bathroom floor, with his sister's hairbrush up his ass, screwing himself with it. Enthusiastically.
Her complaint was, no lie, that the handle was "too hard and had a flat end with straight edges that might have hurt the boy". And further that it was unhygienic for her daughter to use a brush that had been up her younger brother's ass. No, not to brush her hair, it seems that the boy had learned from watching his sister use the same brush on herself. The mom wanted to know why we didn't make hair brushes specifically for boys and make sure the shape was anatomically correct.
Now in our industry there have always been two types of jokes about hairbrushes: that kids got spanked with them, or that women pleasured themselves on them. But they were just jokes, right? I mean do you know anyone who actually used a hair brush for either of those two uses, really? They're just not designed with those things in mind. In fact the ends of most of our products were getting sharper and more pointed, shank ready for some girl-prison-movie, I guess. I actually worried that we might get sued if some woman accidently poked her eye out with one of the sharper models!
As I sat at my desk I imagined a young boy lying on his back with our model 227b hairbrush up his ass till the bristles were almost poking the delicate flesh of his butt cheeks, an open jar of Vaseline next to him, too much missing from the container to suggest just occasional use. Was he jabbing quickly and harshly or slowly sliding it in and out till it almost would be ejected from his tight poop chute? Perhaps he varied the rhythm with the pumping of his other hand, fast then slower, then fast again. Was he thinking about some big cock filling his ass, a friend's or a strange man's? I imagined his look of bliss; no, probably more a look of fierce concentration, the handle on the 227b is quite long and thick. What, I wonder was the look on his face when his mom caught him there on the floor, red handed. (Or should I say red fisted, or red faced... ) I had to say the whole image was quite compelling. As I move my erection around in my boxers I realized I had leaked quite a bit of pre-cum into my pants and I even had a bit of a wet spot on my chinos. That hadn't happened in the office since, well never.
I pondered on, did young boys actually do things like that? I instantly flashed back to a photograph I saw in my human sexuality class textbook in college. I never forgot it; it was of a young boy nuzzling a six- foot tall phallus in a museum somewhere in Europe. It was of dark smooth wood and too big around for the boy hands to encircle. His nose and lips were pressed up against it and a look of absolute delight was plastered all over his face as he hugged and rubbed this giant penis. I don't remember the caption, but it was something about the innocence of children or some such drivel. Hell, what if this lady was on to something? Would it be possible to design a line of thinly disguised sex toys for boys as hair styling products? We'd make them soft and firm with no sharp edges. We could do various sizes that the kids would trade up to as time went on. The tag line would be that they are safer for kids; no getting poked- in the eye. They'd be safer for school too, no worries about zero tolerance for weapons. We could even make gel that doubled as a lube.
I have some great designers on staff and when I explained what I wanted they just took off with it. We had prototypes for market research in a month. It was a pleasure sitting behind the one way mirror in the trial sessions. We set the boys up so that it was like the bathroom at home with a mirror and a sink separated from each other by shear curtains. We had them strip to the waist and do their hair like they would in the morning. The boys (no matter what age) kept gripping and squeezing the brush handles, they literally wouldn't let them go once they got their hands on it. But you could tell they were a bit puzzled as to why they liked it so much. Our designers did a great job of making them anatomically correct without looking at all like what they so obviously were. Even down to the faux wood grain "veins" and ridges. (Ten percent post consumer recycling and natural rubber even gave these products a green rating.) When you use a hairbrush it naturally gets close to your mouth. Would you believe these boys had the ends in their mouths after only 60 seconds! Once they were wet with saliva they would "absently" rub them over their nipples in circular patterns as they patted their hair with the other hand.
When they needed both hands to fluff or flatten they popped the handles deep into their mouths, their lips making that beautiful tight O. You could see them tonguing around the contours, and hollowing their cheeks, perhaps just to make sure that the brush didn't fall out. They seem to know instinctively not to use their teeth on the soft rubber. The gel we produced was much slicker than they were used to and they kept rubbing their hands and fingers together as they applied it. While they worked many of the boys sported noticeable erections in their baggy pants, many seemed to be totally oblivious as they went about their grooming duties. Some, you could tell, could barely stop themselves from ramming their hands down their pants and pleasure themselves, if they could get away with it. I was sure that given some more time and little privacy, boys of all ages could think of lots to do with the handles of these brushes.
When the study was finished they patently refused to give the brushes up, immediately sticking them deep in their pants pockets with defiant glares at the group moderators. We couldn't allow the prototypes to leave and it was a bit of a struggle getting them all back, many boys were willing to forgo their stipends in exchange for the "best hair brush they had ever used". In the end they had to promise the boys that they would get "their" brush mailed to them personally as soon as the line hit the market. Before relinquishing them the boys even compared each other's commenting on the size and shape with obvious pride. I have the first videos of those sessions and I still get a thrill looking at them.
My favorite part of this story is that we paid to have our products indorsed by parent magazines, schools, and church groups as a safe alternative to hard, sharp, dangerous hair care products currently on the market. These child protection groups bent over backwards to take our money in the name of "safety for kids" and shielding them against "dangers". It was positively hysterical when we had a personal endorsement from one of the most recognizable youth ministers in the country. He suggested that kids would spend more time on their appearance and have better grooming and hygiene (cleanliness is next to godliness, you know) if they used our products. He evidenced the amount of time his own sons now spent in the bathroom-- making sure their hair was just right.
Needless to say the products were an overnight success. They couldn't keep "Boy Hair Toys" stock at Wal-mart and department stores. I loved hearing how boys would trade each other for the various harder to get models and unique shapes or colors. We came out with many sizes, finding that after a few weeks with the smaller size, most boys wanted to move up to the larger models. Of course we did have some parent complaints: The boys seemed to go through a lot of gel (we made jumbo sizes to help this) and they often noticed a strange odor on the brush handles, but we made them dishwasher safe and recommended frequent cleaning. Our website features many self-shot photos of boys in the bathroom with their boy toys. We only put the G rated ones up, for obvious reasons. But we do send special limited edition Boy Toy models to boys that share more personal photographs; some even send videos! Remind me next time and I'll tell you about the vibrating tooth brushes we made too. I guess the moral of this little marketing story is that boys love their toys, and smart marketers don't forget it!