The Order of the Blade: or, How One Project Renewed my Faith in Advertising and Humanity

To reestablish their No Bullshit ethos, we brought two dozen Dollar Shave Club customers together and created the world’s first Customer Run Ad Agency. Normally, with the “your customers come up with the ideas!” genre, there are guardrails and safeguards. This time, there were none. I spent MANY a night thinking this would fail. I showed up to the shoot with a pit in my stomach. And then, like Dr. Strange holding up his single finger to Tony Stark, it went so unbelievably well. These guys – from all different backgrounds and beliefs – bought in HARD. They had a blast. They played in the sandbox we built for them. Afterwards, two of them got Order of the Blade Tattoos. And I left feeling like there’s hope in this ad game, after all.