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Gillette has become the latest brand to take on challenging social issues with a commercial that has drawn swift criticism for what some view to be heavy-handed messaging about bad male behavior. But in the weeks since the debut of its “toxic masculinity” ad, the company’s sales have been holding steady while the controversy around it has dimmed from a red-hot conflagration to a constructive conversation about the messaging.
The ad, which tackles bullying, sexual harassment, the #MeToo movement and even “mansplaining,” asks the question, “Is this the best a man can get?” It’s a play on the enduring Gillette slogan that generations of TV watchers grew up with. The ad has garnered more 25 million views on YouTube since it was posted on January 13, and parent company Procter & Gamble said Wednesday that sales of the iconic razors are at pre-ad levels, while its subscription business is growing. That’s the best a brand can hope for when launching a risky marketing campaign, experts said.
“You do not tinker with your brand. It’s something that you have to be very strategic about,” said Henry C. Boyd, marketing professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. “When you’ve looked at the tea leaves and say this is the direction we need to go in, then you move accordingly. This idea that we’re just going to jump on the new flavor of the month, we’re going to try this – no, you wouldn’t do that. Especially a storied brand like Gillette, they would do their homework first.”
Michael Kehler, professor of masculinity studies at the University of Calgary, agreed. He described the campaign as a provocative mixture of social activism and commercialism.
“I thought this was one more example of the way in which companies and agencies are really reflecting a very different user-consumer, a much more informed consumer,” he said. “I think they are acknowledging these are current times and these are current issues about which their consumers are interested in and have opinions about.”
“This is not only an advertisement about men and boys, it’s an advertisement about power, about gender arrangements, and about the ways we can actually change these arrangements.” –Michael Kehler
Boyd and Kehler analyzed Gillette’s marketing campaign for the Knowledge@Wharton radio show on SiriusXM. (Listen to the podcast at the top of this page.)
Wharton marketing professor Patti Williams, whose research focuses on how emotions influence consumer decision-making, said in an email interview that Gillette has joined a growing cadre of brands that are using social issues to connect to consumers on a gut level.
“Goods and services are consumed as part of culture, and I think it’s just natural that marketers try to place their goods and services into cultural trends,” she noted. “I think it’s also clearly the case that consumers increasingly want to buy products and services from brands that stand for something meaningful. People want brands and companies to have values and to speak about those values. And they want to align with brands and companies that share their values.”
Preachy and Inauthentic?
While the professors offered praise for the ad, there has been a social media backlash. Detractors have denounced Gillette’s approach as preachy and inauthentic, a desperate attempt to gain sales in the face of increased pressure from low-cost competitors Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club. In an opinion piece, industry publication Ad Age warned against “woke” advertising because it can go wrong.
“Consumers are smart, and you underestimate your audience at your own peril,” the article stated. “They assumed their target would be receptive to the message, but it was delivered in a bizarre fashion, towing the line between humor and earnestness. While the message clicked for some (including many women), it made others feel uncomfortable or downright angry. And who can blame them? No one likes being told they’re bad and then asked to buy something.”
Kehler and Boyd questioned the motives of people who don’t like the ad, saying perhaps they should look inside themselves for the reasons why. Critics are most likely older, conservative men who want to uphold sharp gender lines and don’t want any disruption to the social status-quo.
“If you have a really stellar, strong brand, you’re going to have to take a position and be clear about it.” –Henry C. Boyd
But the disruption is already underway, they pointed out. “Some men feel threatened by this and by the narrative that it portrays,” Kehler said. “If you watch the ad towards the end, you see men as change agents. We don’t see a barrage of images of men who are caring, nurturing, parenting, because that hasn’t been the narrative. We see a lot of stereotypes of masculinity, and that points to, as we move along in the advertisement, the ability to change.”
The ad dovetails with current events and is an entry point for deeper discussion about shifting gender roles and gender identify, he added. “We saw it with the politics in the U.S., and we see it with these advertisements as chance to have a conversation, to not only think back but also to think forward about the direction in which we’re going, toward greater equality. This is not only an advertisement about men and boys, it’s an advertisement about power, about gender arrangements, and about the ways we can actually change these arrangements and be a part of that change.”
For Boyd, the ad evokes what he calls “productive masculinity,” which is a topic worthy of broader discussion.
“It’s the idea that you have this power and, if you do channel it in the right way, you can do these things that effect good change in society,” he said. “As we go forward and we think of the next generation of boys as we are raising them, saying that here are the things you can channel that energy into, and it can be better for all – that is a good thing.”
Taking a Risk
Williams said Gillette was smart to seize on a topic that is within the brand’s purview, much in the same way that Nike backed former NFL player Colin Kapernick’s decision to take a knee during the national anthem. Nike’s move to feature Kapernick in a commercial sparked an immediate backlash, but the company saw a subsequent spike in sales.
“It has to be done in a way that feels like it’s a place where the brand has the credibility and legitimacy to speak.” –Patti Williams
Williams said Gillette’s decision to turn its old slogan – “The best a man can get” — on its ear was very clever.
“Cultural hot-button issues can be relevant. There are risks there, though,” she said. “It has to be an authentic engagement with the conversation. It has to be done in a way that feels like it’s a place where the brand has the credibility and legitimacy to speak. That’s why their use of the tagline was so effective. They framed this as clearly within their sphere of credibility.”
Boyd said brands can no longer afford to be neutral if they want to resonate with their target audience.
“The luxury of standing in the middle of the road and saying, ‘Well, I’m not going to take a position’ — I think those days are gone,” he said. “If you have a really stellar, strong brand, you’re going to have to take a position and be clear about it.”
All three professors said they are using the Gillette campaign as a teaching tool in their classrooms to engage students in conversation about brand messaging, marketing strategy and current events.
“This is very much an opportunity for teachers to use this [ad] as a springboard for conversations with students to think about power, to think about gender, to think about the ways in which we can disrupt or interrupt this notion of boys being boys,” Kehler said.
Added Boyd: “The entire community has to be involved in this. It’s not an easy conversation to have, but it’s one we have to have. We’ve got to revisit this; we’ve got to change accordingly. If all parties are involved, I think we will get there.”
Join The Discussion
10 Comments So Far
Ram Raja
The opinions of the guests allude to the idea that most men + women who have a negative reaction to the ad are actually not the audiences that Gillette is focused on/need to be (may be they are older audiences with outdated apprehensions), as changing attitudes towards gender roles and power amongst the ‘GenZ’ audiences will normalize messaging and even make it a successful pivot to make it more appealing to the audiences.
They also paint a parallel with Nike’s Colin Ad. If one takes one look at the post-ad audience traffic data for both brands, one would understand why this ad falls short. When Nike’s ad dropped, none of the competition brands had a spike in traffic. The interest over time for Adidas, Puma, Reebok etc. did NOT change.
Compare that to the data pertaining to this ad. Pretty much every competitor had a spike in interest. Especially Dollar Shave Club. The trend lines point to a direct correlation between this Gillette Ad and people choosing to visit other brands. This did not happen during Nike’s Campaign.
What does this show? It shows that context and street cred matter. Gillette is NO NIKE. No one…GenZ or otherwise, calls their friends and flaunts their brand new ‘Six Bladed, Ultra Smooth, Woke Wonder’. It is a monopolistic commodity that has survived due to sheer lack of choice.
It is one thing to say that it is smart for brands to embrace such messaging. It is completely different thing to claim that Gillette did the right thing here. It is to say that audiences will basically just buy into any a narrative that a brand portrays and play along. If that is the case, I wonder why Gillette has lost 20% of it’s market share in the past 10 years. It’s not that the ‘older folks’ who have abandoned it! It’s precisely the ‘GenZ’ that has chosen better, more smarter, affordable and personalized brands.
Nevertheless, the numbers would speak the truth very soon. Let’s see how this pans out.
Robert Ballantyne
Woke will be spelled DOOM for the future in my opinion.
The ad fails on so many levels, first is activist mass consumerism is generally carried out in middle to lower middle class. This is the market that has created the Dollar Shave Club success. There is not enough discretionary income in this target to more to an over priced product from where they presently purchase.
Conscientious consumption is generally middle to upper middle income and the lower end of wealthy. This is precisely the group that is pissed off by this move. Notice I said the move and not the ad. While quite a large number of people reacted to the ad … a larger group has reacted to the move that suddenly they razor company wants to be the morality police. Yep, no thanks!
This is because this group reads and is educated as well as understands how the internet works. So they have a working knowledge of the use of Child labor by P&G’s Gillette in the past. They are not going to be lectured by the newest morality police when they all know why these products are manufactured off shore.
More importantly they will and have made a conscious decision to punish P&G’s Gillette for this idiotic move. (They don’t want their razor company playing dad) and are moving to alternatives to slap Gillette silly. The question is will it stick? My guess is we have to wait for the credit card expiration cycles to complete to find out if this group will put a new credit card into the subscription plan.
Why does this ad fail so badly?
It has created a strawman and most men know it. The idea that Testosterone is suddenly bad is not something men will sign up for in the long run. Most men will agree women should not be treated as objects. But they are not going to agree that boys will be boys is suddenly bad. Competition is not something that is taught, it is something that hormones drive and hormones will not be argued with or debated. So a man will agree women should be treated equally, and will show so by using what his hormones demand to teach both sons and daughters to be successful and win, most will still want their children to have the tools to win at life.
It will certainly be interesting to watch over time …. but Woke is not going to be a battle cry in the marketplace for long …. as everyone’s version of Woke has a different place where the line is drawn creating a situation that when a company tries it, it will always piss off a segment or segments that consider themselves Woke but think it either did not go far enough or think it went to far. Not a good model.for product messaging.
Get Woke Go Broke is very real.
Michael Serra
I would ask why Kehler and Boyd feel people that don’t like the add have to look inside themselves? Why would anyone beside a student dependent on a grade care what they think? Like most men I know (differing ages and racial backgrounds) we are comfortable with our masculinity. We do not bully people and we do not mistreat women that’s a given. And what does men looking inside themselves have to do with buying razors? I get my razors from Harry’s this commercial gave me no reason to buy Gillette. If you want to be somewhat unbiased please look at the dove men care commercials. This is a feel good positive message that makes me want to use the product. Isn’t that the goal of an ad to get people to use the product?
Nicole Provonchee
I think it is important to note that masculinity is not what is in question here – it is toxic masculinity that is challenged. It is an important distinction that I think some men are missing in the overall dialogue. The ad is actually saying that being a man means you step and help the little guy (a child being bullied) or you treat a women as an equal.
I appreciated this quote from the article: “As we go forward and we think of the next generation of boys as we are raising them, saying that here are the things you can channel that energy into, and it can be better for all – that is a good thing.”
All that said – I do want to point out that you had two men review the ad. I would like to have seen a woman included in the mix of reviewers. Part of the challenge of the ad is to be more inclusive – which is something that I think the review article misses.
Bill Huey
Authors: “Critics are most likely older, conservative men who want to uphold sharp gender lines and don’t want any disruption to the social status-quo.”
Now we’re talking stereotypes! Archie Bunker doesn’t shave, and he’s an old troglodyte who can written off by Gillette anyway.
One [female] British commentator called this commercial “hideously woke,” and I agree. I also concur with Mr. Ballantyne that Woke has no future in the marketplace. In advertising parlance, it’s borrowed interest, focusing on a peripheral social issue rather than the brand promise.
Robert Ballantyne
So there is a definition of toxic masculinity where?
This goes to my point that each male will decide that for themselves so it will be another strawman that cannot be quantified with a definition.
And that does not ever make for a good basis for a social position. Now does it ever lead to a group of the target vertical signing on to carry the torch.
And testicles are not easy to live with …. it’s like your hanging around with two nuts!
Thomas Lauterio
The ad fails because it gives the impression that most men behave poorly. If poor acting males are a tiny minority then why target masculinity versus calling out a few? The ad associates masculinity with bad behavior and that irrational association is taught on college campuses and illustrated in tv shows every day. Men are just tired of being portrayed as the bad guy. This follows a witch hunt against a Supreme Court nominee where it was shown every witness lied or recanted. The main star witness lied multiple times under oath and that is not debatable. Yet after all facts supported Kavanaugh women’s groups still stated Kavenaugh must have done something because he’s a male! This is the world we live in. Gillette, a men’s shaving company for many years, seems to have jumped down their customers throats to join this wacky campaign against all men. That’s why men reacted the way they did.
DJ Rouken
The most glaring mishap in this campaign is a very basic one.
The Nike ad was one of solidarity. It appealed to the young, who are typically liberal, therefore gaining a strong support among it’s consumer base, thus raising sales.
Where is the solidarity here? Gillette and the feminist creators? They alienated their demographic…and to be clear here, growth is measured quarterly, not weekly, so declaring success at this stage seems more cheerleading than solid market analysis.
Second, is the glaring lack of knowledge and research and default position of simply accepting, without question, the assumption. When Bliss coined the term, “toxic masculinity” back in the 90s, it was to inform men how their noble intent, genetic disposition to service and sacrifice is often manipulated by “others” for gain. In short, how society is toxic to them, not the other way around.
While Gillette is preaching about “toxic masculinity”, it is practicing it by manipulating men through a false narrative, gender wide guilt, to put themselves at risk not for their own good, but for the benefit and protection of women…and we are talking the average man who has no business trying to police others. It wreaks of the very “macho”, or “toxic masculinity” they claim they will, through bully tactics, evaporate.
So, as has happened a myriad of times in the past, what will be the excuse when some random man is harmed or killed trying to be non-toxic and steps into a situation that he is ill prepared to manage?
Beyond that, claiming that men who are angered by the ad are themselves “toxic” is simply a dismissal tactic, not unlike “mansplaining”. It is the very bullying that the male is being accused of. It is used so that one does not have to defend and indefensible position, or opinion…and that all this is, opinion.
The scary version is exactly what this article exposes. These professors have now taken the opinion of a razor manufacturer, with zero validation or proven research, and will begin to use it to further indoctrinate our boys into a certain mindset that is what is truly damaging our boys.
We know the huge and glaring numbers of boys being raised without fathers, that 75% of teachers are women, that 80% of counselors and social workers are women, that some boys do not even interact on a personal level with a male until they are in middle school.
We know that 90% of our most dangerous criminals in our prisons today have been raised in the single parent female head of household. We know that virtually every school shooter was raised in the same.
Not an indictment of women. , because it is not the influence of the feminine, but the lack of the masculine that is the problem. The exact opposite message the ad is arguing. We’ve simply left our boys out in the cold, and only bring them in to castigate or blame for all the worlds ills, and this ad follows suite in what has become a mountain of dogmatic rambling.
It is a continuation of the demonetization of the sub-group of people that are the very, and only reason this country exist. It sweeps aside the immense sacrifice that the male has laid upon the alter of freedom, fails to note that this country, because of men, is the safest, most profitable place in the world to be a woman.
it is a complete rewrite of the narrative, predicated upon the ideology of a very small, anti-male agenda, supported by a very large media conglomerate, and promulgated as truth out to the masses.
For the record, considering the number of negative, or “down votes” being removed (which I witnessed myself over several refreshes), a more accurate analysis would not be “some men disagree”, but an overwhelming majority, the likes of which very, very few surveys would determine, summarily dismiss the add, the verbiage following it.
Gillette started a conversation, just not the one they had hoped for…and they’ve opened a proverbial can or worms the likes of which we have not witnessed since the impetus of the women’s movement of the 70s.
Mando Reforger
The “look inside yourself” commentary mentioned in the article is cut from the same cloth as this ad. It is just another glib, superficial stereotype-an intellectual shortcut that is borderline offensive.
…and that is the real downfall here. The ad is also a glib, superficial mashup up negative stereotypes about men. It is fake, inauthentic and delivered by a questionable messenger (Gillette). This brand really ought to be ashamed for its continued psychological manipulation of men built on the theme of “gaining the favor of women” by paying their increasingly unjustifiable brand premiums. It reeks of desperation in the level of “PC wokeness” dialed up to “obnoxious” level.
All the “villains” are white. The “heroes” (or victims) are predominantly black. The examples are both staged and cartoonish, and the “heroism” are things men (especially fathers) do every single day. To preach “do not let your kids physically fight at a BBQ” is tremendously condescending because this point has been obvious to any father…since forever!
Most fathers get after their sons for verbally fighting in front of neighbors! This ad appears to have been written and produced by a woman with no experience raising boys (indeed it was), and yet purports to have some deep insight on the topic. It is offensive in its vast oversimplification and condescending tone. It is a strawman caricature of reality.
The issue is not with the underlying message, and much of the ad is powerful emotionally, particularly the truly authentic shots of men being ideal fathers. It is with the fake, inauthentic style.
Gillette is a brand that has always demanded that men shave to PLEASE women, and now they are trying to make the brand about “supporting women’s rights” instead of personal grooming. I am sorry, but this is self-serving and manipulative. It is corporate propaganda from a company that charges women more money for the same razor technology, and they already overcharge men.
Gillette realizes that the arc of shaving technology has just about run out, and the technological lead it has is not worth that much to the average man. Their response is to make it mean something to the average woman via emotionally manipulative ads.
The whole strategy is sexist from the outset. It implied that men are not swayed enough emotionally to pay 50% more for marginally better razors…
…but women can be emotionally manipulated to care to pay more. So they set out to do exactly that.
It is a sexist strategy, and it is ultimately doomed. Once women are made to see “the pink tax” they get angry. They should be.
Mando Reforger
ONE ADDITIONAL THOUGHT: The ad is wholly anti-scientific. It lays the issue at the feet of “fatherhood” and the imagery is unmistakable.
However, the vast consensus of social scientific research shows that LACK OF FATHERS is the predominant issue underlying troubled and “toxically masculine” (undisciplined) boys.
Study after study has confirmed that fatherless boys are more likely to want to “show off” to other males which can result in all types of risky behavior, from drugs, larceny and of course sexual assault.
By attacking “present fathers” (again, the imagery is obvious) the ad completely lacks courage and any basis in scientific reality. It was easier to attack active fathers than to raise the real issue of single mother households and “absent fathers” which is a giant transgression against cultural “wokeness.”
The ad pretends to be courageous, but it is not. It panders to obnoxious “anti-stereotypes” (i.e. white men are rude, black men have manners, all women hate to be called “sweetie” or be pursued by a man) and avoids touching the real issue troubling young men these days…
It is glib, thoughtless and cartoonish.