Gillette: how vexed a man can get
The early response to Gillette’s extraordinary take on “toxic masculinity” in the #MeToo age shows it may backfire at the checkout.
An African-American man stares at himself in the mirror. There is an earnest, troubled look on his face. “Is this the best a man can get?” asks the voiceover. “Is it?”
A two-minute exposition of the various challenges of toxic male culture then ensues, complete with mansplaining, bullying, sexual predation and “boys being boys”.
The short film concludes with a reminder that the boys watching this misbehaviour today will be the men of the tomorrow. Fade to the logo of the brand behind this new campaign: Gillette.
So ends easily the most controversial ad of 2019. It probably will retain that status for the rest of the year, based more on the impassioned response the campaign has attracted in its first few days than on the execution.
Gillette’s ad has created a firestorm around the state of male culture and the issues of “toxic masculinity” in the #MeToo age.
It is an ad with global reach and it also is provoking intense debate in Australia. But what is the logic behind this bold new campaign from Gillette? And will it actually sell more razors?
Gillette is owned by consumer goods giant Procter & Gamble, and the company has made no bones about its agenda to use its brands and advertising to push the themes of inclusion, diversity and equality. The company’s most senior marketer, Marc Pritchard, has long been a critic of the role of marketing in reinforcing cultural stereotypes.
Rather than simply ensuring P&G avoids these errors, he is engaged in making his company’s marketing a positive influence on society. He has expressed the need for “everybody in the industry” to “change the way people view the world”.
P&G already has applied this purpose-led approach to several of its other brands, most famously with its #LikeAGirl campaign for feminine hygiene brand Always in 2014. Gillette now is receiving the same treatment.
Other than an ideological agenda, there is also some commercial logic behind the campaign. It’s 30 years since Gillette launched its now globally famous slogan, “The best a man can get”.
While Gillette is keen to retain that slogan and all the residual awareness and familiarity that comes with it, the great danger with all marketing tactics is that they eventually become outdated. The original Gillette images of men high-fiving each other, going into space and generally being manly in a very 1980s way are images of a time long gone.
Gillette is not attempting to reposition its brand but, rather, to revitalise what the “best” and “masculinity” stand for in the 21st century. It has discovered the great paradox of branding across decades is that, for a brand such as Gillette to stay consistent to its values, it must change the images and tactics it uses.
But there is a snag in this logic that has become all too apparent in the days since the commercial first aired. Gillette has a very large established customer base and analysts estimate that, despite a significant price premium over competitors, the brand retains a 50 per cent share of the men’s shaving market in the US. In Australia the share is even higher.
Research reveals that Gillette’s customers are far more conservative in their general outlook than the average male. In fact, of all the multitude of societal concerns that motivate Gillette’s customers, what interests them the least, according to the available data, is gender diversity.
P&G may want to push for a change in attitudes to masculinity, but its existing customer base has little interest in such things.
And although some younger non-consumers of Gillette may be open to this message, many more existing Gillette customers appear ready to reject the idea of their razor brand re-evaluating what it means to be a man.
Recruiting younger men is clearly a positive outcome for Gillette. The billion-dollar question is whether this influx of new consumers will offset the exodus the campaign appears to be generating among brand loyalists. Marketers usually prefer the safer, existing market in which they operate over the temptations of more difficult and often costly customer acquisition. That’s especially true when those existing customers number half the total market.
And there can be no doubt that the reaction from those existing customers has been predominantly negative. Social media has been flooded with negative comments and images of angry consumers flushing their Gillette razors down the toilet and reacting very poorly to the new campaign.
“Thanks for convincing me, my male friends and all the men in my family to buy our shaving products elsewhere”
“Thanks for convincing me, my male friends and all the men in my family to buy our shaving products elsewhere,” one angry ex-customer posted on Wednesday on Gillette’s official YouTube site.
“Maybe instead of alienating a large portion of potential customers by virtue-signalling about politics you should try to sell razors instead,” posted another. In barely three days the short ad has generated 800,000 dislikes on YouTube — more than double the number of likes for the campaign.
The ad is remarkable for the sheer amount of social interaction it has generated and the degree to which it has divided the public into two seemingly incompatible groups.
A significant proportion of comments come from people, especially women, who are moved by the campaign and its call for a change in masculine habits. But there has been an even greater groundswell of negative reaction from others who have been enraged by a razor company telling them how to behave and the patronising manner in which that message is conveyed.
Crucially, more of Gillette’s consumers appear to be in the latter camp rather than the former.
Supporters of the campaign claim the ad is clearly a success because “it has everybody talking about it”. There is, according to this point of view, “no such thing as bad publicity”. By that standard Hitler is still the most popular leader of all time, the Gulf of Mexico disaster was brilliant for BP and last year the ABC was having the best year in its history.
It’s certainly true that generating awareness is always a crucial ingredient in brand success — consumers can’t buy what they do not know exists. But for an ad campaign to succeed it must do more than generate simple awareness.
The question is whether this increase in attention delivers a desirable image that pushes target customers to a more positive perception and ultimately a sale. A lot of female commentators say it will. Many have suggested the campaign is aimed at them because they appreciate the ad and do all the razor purchasing for their households. That may be true in some cases but not for most.
Almost half of all adult American men are single, for starters — it’s the same in Australia — and men who are in a relationship claim to buy more than half their own beauty products. Even when women do purchase for men, they are likely buying blades for a razor brand initially chosen by the male consumer. The target consumer for men’s razors, and this campaign, is male.
Others have tried to claim that the clearly negative response on social media is the work of alt-right groups in the US who are using the campaign to stoke up cultural discord among the population.
No doubt a fair number of the negative comments on YouTube are from fake accounts and non-human bots created by a host of potential agitators. Such is social media in 2019. But by the same token, it would appear that someone is also doing a sterling job of deleting as many of the negative comments as possible when they appear across social media.
Thousands of comments on YouTube have been reposted because the author claims their original message has mysteriously disappeared from the site overnight. On social media the fake knife cuts both ways.
No one ultimately knows how this fascinating branding saga will play out. And that’s a frightening thought when Gillette has billions in revenue, huge market share, a gigantic price premium and so many alternative brands — such as Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s — desperate to take a slice of the action away from it.
At this early stage, it’s impossible to say what the long-term impact on Gillette’s sales will be. A lot of consumers cry wolf on social media and then continue to buy the product once the digitally induced discussion dies down.
But there is a vehemence to some of the comments about Gillette that suggests P&G has a significant issue on its hands. It won’t kill the company or destroy its ludicrously profitable business model for Gillette. But my bet is that the net impact of this campaign and all the resources invested into it will result in more consumers abandoning the brand than adopting it. You don’t shave more often because you believe in a brand’s politics so, all things being equal, this could mean a hit to sales. P&G has sparked a major debate about gender and masculinity across the world, but it may well have done so by sacrificing its own sales.
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A quick life lesson from our sponsor
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