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AnonTechie writes:

The Wall Street Journal obtained the marketing materials for Gillette's new razor [log-in required], the ProGlide FlexBall. "It's a men's razor that does what every other men's razor since time immemorial has done - removes hair from your face - but with "a swiveling ball-hinge" that the company says will make it easier to get a clean shave. It will retail for $11.49 and $12.59, depending on whether you want the battery-powered version or not, and Gillette is planning to sell $188 million worth of the things in the next year alone. I won't mince words: ProGlide FlexBall is a bad idea. A really bad idea. In fact, the razor represents everything terrible about America's innovation economy." The article continues:

By now, everyone knows how razor companies make their money. They sell you cheap razor handles, then burn you later with expensive cartridge refills. On top of that business model, Gillette and other market leaders introduced an arms-race component to the industry - going from two blades to three, then to four and five and six. Each new blade adds only a smidgen of extra utility, but it convinced gullible customers that they needed to upgrade their models every few years to stay current.

These twin strategies created a $3.7 billion industry, with Gillette controlling more than 65 percent of the market. A few years ago, though, something happened that threatened Gillette's dominance. Upstarts like the Dollar Shave Club began exploiting the obvious - namely, that it shouldn't cost $20 for a pack of razor cartridge refills, and began to shave away (sorry) some of Gillette's competitive edge by selling razors for cheaper over the internet. The shaving industry, as they say in Silicon Valley, had been disrupted.

Procter & Gamble, Gillette's parent company, had a few options for responding to the disruption. It could have lowered Gillette's prices, and accepted that its profit margins would take a hit in exchange for preserving its market share. It could have thrown more money into research and development for a completely new, whiz-bang product - an affordable home laser hair-removal system, for example, that would eliminate the need for razors altogether. It could even have copied the upstarts and introduced a mail-order razor club of its own while it figured out the next big thing.

Instead, Procter & Gamble - a company whose scientists once led the way on American innovation, coming up with revolutionary products like laundry detergent - decided to go with a glorified marketing gimmick. According to the Journal, Gillette plans to spend $200 million promoting the ProGlide FlexBall, with a campaign that centers on telling people that "the blades miss 20% fewer hairs with each pass and that it can cut each whisker 23 microns shorter - about a quarter of the width of a strand of human hair."