Unilever's Clear launches YouTube channel for men

Clear recognizes the growth in video consumption globally, and that this is very relevant in Singapore, especially for men, according to a spokesperson for Unilever and Mindshare. In July 2013, YouTube had a reach of about 2.2 million in Singapore, according to data from Comscore. The site received about 500,000 unique visitors every month.

As part of the new initiative, Clear has created a series of over 40 tongue-in-cheek short format videos created for men. For example, one video encourages men to use beer for lustrous hair, but the narrator backtracks and asks, “Why waste a good beer? Get Clear!”

In another cheeky video, the narrator says not to use your girlfriend’s shampoo as men have greasier scalps. He ends the video by saying “You can still use your girlfriend—just not her shampoo”.

“Clear is progressively creating more content for men and want to engage with them rather than pushing one ‘brand film,’” said the spokesperson.

In line with that, Mindshare was tasked with creating a hub where content can be housed and consumers can interact. The agency has to ensure that the content acts as a conversation starter and engagement continues after content is consumed.  The overall campaign idea and videos have been developed by Arcade, a digital agency in Singapore. 

Thus, Mindshare came up with the idea of a YouTube brand channel with a social conversation module that allows engagement to follow to and from the Clear Facebook page. There is also an interactive tool that allows users to play mini games along with a personalised product search that uses variables such as hair length, grease level and so on to get a product recommendation.

Last September, Unilever set its sights on the growing male grooming sector in Malaysia with the launch of an exclusive men’s branding channel on Microsoft’s MSN website. It was reportedly Asia-Pacific’s first branded male-content portal.

The results were overwhelming. MSN Locker Room engaged with 800,000 Malaysian men in just eight months, surpassing unique user targets by 458 per cent. It reached more than 1 million Malaysian men by its 10th month of operation and continues to grow steadily. MSN Locker Room achieved 2.25 million pageviews, surpassing page view targets by 253 per cent

In an effort to compete with broadcast TV, Google has been pushing original content channels on YouTube for some years now. Some months back, Facebook, announced plans to launch video ads for $2.5 million a day, promising TV like reach.