The Daily Wire spent nearly $150,000 on Facebook ads in the past month promoting their “anti-woke” shaving company Jeremy’s Razors.
The Daily Dot’s analysis of Meta’s Ad Library found that the right-wing media site spent a minimum of $144,300 on countless ads featured across the Facebook pages of Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro, podcaster Candace Owens, and the official Jeremy’s Razors account.
The company has been endlessly pushing the product on Facebook. Since January 2023, the Jeremy’s Razors’ Facebook page alone has spent over a million dollars marketing the product.
This comes amid a slew of negative customer reviews complaining about the alleged poor quality of the razors.
The ad campaign, which began in September, touts the razors as a “woke-free” alternative to more mainstream shaving brands, encouraging men to “embrace” both their “masculinity” and “traditional values.”
“Shave your stubble, not your masculinity,” one ad reads.
“It’s time to man up,” another one says.
A third specifically takes a dig at trans people, claiming that “woke razor companies are encouraging men to transition genders.”
While not every ad is exactly the same, they all make the general claim that buying products—from razors to moisturizers—from Jeremy’s Razors will help men “discover” their “great skin” while giving them “the power to kick woke companies that hate your values out of your home.”
Named after Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boering, Jeremy’s Razors was created in response to Harry’s terminating their advertising partnership with the Daily Wire in March 2021 over the site’s “inexcusable” views of the LGBTQ community. At the time, an X user tagged the direct-to-consumer shaving brand in a tweet, expressing outrage over Daily Wire podcaster Michael Knowles interviewing Joseph Nicolosi Jr.—the son of the late famed conversion therapist Joseph Nicolosi Sr.
Having carried on his father’s work after his death, Nicolosi Jr. is the founder of the Reintegrative Therapy Association, which boasts a high success rate of “decreasing unwanted sexual behaviors” in men with “same-sex attractions.”
“It is wrong that Harry’s or anyone sponsors this vile content,” the user wrote.
Almost three weeks later, Harry’s responded to the post, announcing their decision to pull their advertising from the Daily Wire, condemning the views expressed in the video, which the company said were “at odds with our longtime support of the LGBTQ+ community.” Displeased with this decision, Boering decided to start his own shaving brand, launching Jeremy’s Razors exactly one year later.
In an announcement video for the new brand, which was uploaded to Facebook on March 22, 2022, Boering is pictured setting Harry’s razors on fire with a flamethrower and mocking the company’s support of LGBTQ people. In the clip, he also goes on to claim that firefighters would be “more manly” if they shaved with Jeremy’s Razors and complains that conservatives are “being canceled by Hollywood, the media, universities, and now Harry’s razors.”
Since then, every mainstream razor company’s efforts to make their products and ads more diverse and inclusive have become a marketing opportunity for Jeremy’s Razors to offer up its anti-woke alternative.
While Boering expresses confidence in the shaving products in his self-proclaimed “Greatest Commercial Ever,” this is not necessarily reflected in the reviews and sales for Jeremy’s Razors.
In recent months, customers have been leaving negative reviews on Jeremy’s Razors’ Facebook page, criticizing the quality of the razors and other shaving products. In one review from September, a Facebook user describes the razors as “terrible,” claiming that both her and her husband tried out the razors and found that they were “dull.”
“Don’t waste your money,” she wrote.
“Tried them for the first time and I will now throw them in the trash,” another post reads. “Worst shave ever. Felt like I was dry shaving. Absolutely horrible experience.”
One disappointed customer commented that he “really wanted to like these razors,” but the blades “pull” on his facial hair. “If you’re trying to start an alternative economy, you’re going to have to make a better product than this,” he said.
Another user said the razors left her with “bad razor burn,” adding that her husband “looked like he’d been in a knife fight.”
“I’ve subscribed for way too long because I support the cause, but a rusty Bic disposable probably has sharper blades,” one commenter wrote in October.
For most of the dissatisfied customers who left reviews, their main complaint is the apparent dullness and cheapness of the razors, which they say left them in pain.
Overall, the razors have a 2.6 out of 5 rating from nearly 500 reviews on Facebook.
Amid this onslaught of negative reviews, the Daily Wire has not only increased ad spending for Jeremy’s Razors, but put many of their products on sale, including the Precision 5 Starter Kit, which appears to be the most advertised product.
The ad spend though, is nothing new. In March 2023, the company spent a quarter-million dollars on Facebook ads for the page for products from the brand, ranging from charcoal body wash to “Paraben-free, sulfate-free, woke-free” hair conditioner.
Facebook ad library gives an estimated spending range, but using the low-end of the figures, Jeremy’s Razors alone spent over $1,000,000 on ads, including a quarter-million purchase to hype anti-woke chocolate the group also launched.
While it is unclear exactly how much revenue the company has made to date, the numbers available do not show much growth.
In March 2022, Jeremy’s Razors claimed to have sold 45,000 razor subscriptions in its first week. But a year later, in March 2023, they claimed to have only sold around 130,000 razors total. As a subscription-based company, Jeremy’s Razors allows products to be delivered on a recurring basis every one to 12 months, depending on the product. The Precision 5 Starter Set is $29.99 full price and is currently on sale for $23.99, the Precision 5 Trial Set is $14.99, and the Precision 5 razor and year’s supply of blade refills is $95.99 full price, but is on sale for $74.99.
The Daily Wire has also taken to promoting Jeremy’s Razors in their news articles. In late September, the site took a swipe at Proctor & Gamble’s shaving brand Braun, criticizing the company for being “woke” and embracing “radical gender ideology” after running an ad featuring a trans man shaving.
Although it’s not uncommon for the Daily Wire to call out companies for expressing so-called “woke” values, more than half of the article reads as an ad for Jeremy’s Razors, with the author promoting the “range” of products that Jeremy’s offers to conservatives. “Jeremy’s exists so you don’t have to give your money to companies that hate your values,” the article reads.
But it remains to be seen if efforts like this to hype the razors will work.
For many customers, one purchase seems to have been enough.
