Case Study
Gillette Direct:
When Great Design Transforms Partnerships
How proactive UX redesign elevated our agency role from media and marketing to strategic lead.
Procter & Gamble engaged Ten Four to generate leads ahead of Gillette Direct's Australian launch - an online subscription platform for Gillette products. Our initial remit was narrow: media strategy and lead generation. What followed was an evolution in partnership scope driven by proactive design thinking and strategic initiative.
Solving Friction at Scale
350 orders in 12 hours! A resounding success by all metrics...but the challenge lay in maintaining momentum.
In the lead-up to launch, Ten Four commissioned photo and video shoots, and engaged with influencers to build anticipation. We deployed targeted advertising and lead-gen strategies. Along with a strong opening offer, this made for a successful launch of the Gillette Direct website, selling 350 of Gillette’s flagship heated razors.
Yet as the platform matured, a critical issue emerged: the site's UX and design were creating friction that undermined the effectiveness of our top-of-funnel strategies. We watched as purchases plummeted - without enough incentive, customers were leaving the site frustrated and unfulfilled.
This had immense impact on our role as marketing director - we were sending traffic to the site, but without enough purchases it was difficult to identify high-performing audiences and optimise accordingly.
Working alongside multiple agencies, we lacked direct influence over the site architecture. Still, the data was telling a compelling story - user experience was holding back growth.
Starving the Algorithm
Performance marketing runs on a continuous cycle: launch campaigns, collect conversion data, feed that data back to the platform, and let the algorithm find more people like those who converted. When it works, each cycle sharpens your targeting and improves efficiency.
For Gillette Direct, the loop was technically functioning - conversion data was flowing back to Facebook - but the signal was compromised.
The launch promotion had driven a strong initial wave of purchases, giving the algorithm a clear profile to optimise toward. Once that incentive disappeared, however, conversions dropped sharply. Users were arriving at the site interested, encountering friction, and leaving without purchasing. The algorithm kept optimising, but toward an increasingly small and unrepresentative pool of converters.
This created a compounding problem:
- Fewer conversions meant weaker lookalike audiences.
- Weaker audiences meant lower relevance scores.
- Lower relevance meant higher costs and reduced delivery.
We were spending more to reach people less likely to convert - and the conversion pool stayed too small to course-correct.
The feedback loop had become a vicious cycle. And the root cause wasn't our targeting or creative - it was upstream, in the experience we were sending traffic to.
Taking Initiative
Seeing this trend emerge while plotting the data, I mapped friction points across the user journey, aligning them with key stages of our marketing funnel. Combining my own experience navigating the site with real user sessions via Hotjar, two things became clear:
- Issues were widespread, not isolated
- Surgical fixes wouldn’t cut it - an overhaul was necessary
I reimagined the entire experience from homepage to checkout and beyond, mapping out a more logical flow. These improvements weren't requested - but they were necessary.
I presented internally first, refining based on team feedback. The result was a marked departure from the launch design, positioning Gillette Direct competitively in the subscription razor market.
It was time to run it up the flagpole - we presented to P&G. Two statements changed everything:
- "Why aren't we doing this already?"
- "Don't worry about the cost - just make it happen."
From that moment, Ten Four's role transformed from ancillary media partner to end-to-end program lead.
The Outcome
What began as a tactical media engagement evolved into strategic partnership. Ten Four became the primary point of contact for Gillette's DTC vertical in Australia, with influence spanning the entire marketing ecosystem:
- Tone of voice and creative direction
- Video and photo shoots
- Audience targeting and ad spend allocation
- Email marketing and customer lifecycle automation
- Data analysis and performance reporting
- Website UI, UX, and conversion optimisation
This expanded remit continued until Gillette's strategic withdrawal from the Australian DTC market - a business decision unrelated to performance.
The broader impact
Taking initiative on UX work didn't just solve an immediate conversion problem. It demonstrated strategic value that transformed our agency relationship, proving that proactive design thinking can reshape partnership dynamics and unlock opportunities far beyond the original scope.