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Gillette: The Best a Questioning, Cishet, Non-Binary Ally Can Get
Gillette has had a rough few years. The former shaving hegemon has seen its market share plummet due to a resurgence in classic “wet shaving,” online razor subscription services, and the popularity of beards. Gillette’s obvious options are to lower their artificially high price or drastically improve their quality. Instead, they’ve decided to make their remaining customers feel bad about themselves through an expensive new ad campaign.
“You’re a very bad person, give us money” is an odd marketing pitch, especially from a company that’s used sex to sell its product for decades. (Every time I shave, I’m disappointed no scantily-clad supermodel steps up behind me to rub my smooth face.) The Wall Street Journal attempts to explain Gillette’s campaign:
The ad puts a new spin on the brand’s 30-year tagline, “The Best A Man Can Get,” challenging men to take positive actions, such as stopping other men, and the next generation, from harassing women.
“This is an important conversation happening, and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel compelled to both address it and take action of our own,” said Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette brand director for North America in an emailed statement. “We are taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ is not an excuse. We want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and hope all the men we serve will come along on that journey to find our ‘best’ together.”
“It’s a risky move,” said Dean Crutchfield, CEO of branding firm Crutchfield + Partners. On one hand, it “creates a credible, believable, and upfront conversation that takes brutal honesty and tough decisions,” he said.
Customers don’t want brutal honesty and tough decisions, especially when they already get those every hour of the day. Gillette’s target market wants a smooth face for a low price.
Of course, Gillette refuses to provide that; it would destroy its business model. A century ago, King Gillette revolutionized marketing by offering a dirt-cheap (or free) razor handle. He then sold replacement razors at a high markup, locking consumers into a lifetime of expensive refills. Many imitators followed his model, something you notice every time you replace ink cartridges in your printer.
By the 2000s, Gillette was offering 38 blades with lawn-trimmer attachment for about $20 a month; men had enough. Some guys (like me), bought shaving brushes and simple safety razors that provided a better shave for pennies a blade.
A few years later, Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s offered multi-blade razors online which performed better than Gillette at a fraction of the price. The shaving giant attempted a club of their own, but it was an overpriced scam like the rest of their product line. Watching their market share continue to decline, Gillette has now declared war on its customer base. Back to WSJ:
Gillette parent Procter & Gamble Co. is among companies that in recent years have used advertising as a platform to promote their stance on social issues such as gender equality, and polarizing political topics such as immigration and gun control. P&G is perhaps best known for its lauded “Like a Girl” ad campaign for feminine-care brand Always and “Stress test” for deodorant brand Secret.
Promoting social issues can be effective marketing, but notice the difference. P&G’s female-directed ads make women feel better about themselves. The company tells women “you’re great just as you are” and tells men “you’re bad and need to change.” I’ve yet to complete my Marketing Ph.D., but I don’t think a message of “Women are revolting, buy Secret” would spike profits.
What do you think about Woke Gillette? Will it change your buying decisions?
Published in General
In the fine article of being on Twitter now, someone went through Harry’s feed and found a similar video from 2017 they did for International Men’s Day.
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1085193757446725633
Every company is trying to be woke. Where can we go from Gillette?
An Ad Suggestion for Gillette.
I don’t think Gillette has gone far enough. Clearly there’s a market segment they’re not thinking about who rely on what their products can do to fundamentally transform them. To wit:
A 30-something man stands before a mirror (but actually the camera) with lather on his face. He holds up a Gillette razor and says:
He begins to shave.
He’s finished shaving and is putting on a large pink floral puffy dress with ruffles and looks at the camera.
Fade out.
Superimpose tag: Gillette – The best a man can get when he really is a woman after all.
Positive or negative, more people have Gillette on the brain today than they did two days ago.
If their customers are eager to be insulted, then it makes perfect sense.
The only daytime soap opera I’ve ever followed was Coronation Street.
Worked like a charm for Dick’s Sporting Goods.
The sort of men who believe that their choice of razor blade brand makes an iota of difference to their lives may indeed be just that insecure.
Gillette is, basically, a cosmetics brand. Insecure men are their target customers. It’s a totally different market than sporting goods.
Proctor & Gamble was founded on the strategy of selling solutions to problems that insecure people didn’t even know they had.
e.g. They invented “halitosis” to sell Listerine.
Look at the history of virtually any P&G product and you’ll find that the leitmotif of all their marketing is to market to the insecure and irrational.
Tide doesn’t get clothes any cleaner than other brands of detergent. Charmin doesn’t get your bum any cleaner than other brands of toilet paper. Downy doesn’t make your clothes any softer than other brands of fabric softener. Crest doesn’t get your teeth any cleaner than other brands of toothpaste. Dawn doesn’t make your dishes any cleaner than other brands of dish detergent. Etc. Etc. Etc.
Profiting from the irrational obsessions of insecure human beings is the business that Proctor & Gamble is in. They have to market their products this way, because they sell products whose patent protection ran out decades ago (and in some cases over a century ago).
The only way to sell branded commodities that are substantively identical to generic competitors is to lie about them.
Have they deleted the one I saw a screenshot of earlier? “My wife’s son loves this ad.” Gillette responded with ‘glad to hear’ and others were grilling them for missing the joke.
Brian,
Damn it, Brian, you are an advertising genius!! Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. BTW, is it possible for sales to be recorded in negative numbers? You know, after nobody buys anything they check to see how many say they wouldn’t buy it if it were the last product on earth.
Regards,
Jim
I just watched the Pats-Chargers game at Gillette Stadium, so not me.
Proctor & Gamble’s ad for Secret showing a transgender male in a women’s restroom. The ad apparently never ran:
It’s positively Satanic!
Probably a lot of toxic masculinity going on on that field. Too bad Gillette didn’t send down a representative to say, “Now Tom, you already got to score a bunch of touchdowns so now it’s only fair that we let Phil score some too.”
I’ve heard that they did, I certainly wasn’t able to find it when I looked.
So much for Harry’s Shave.
https://twitter.com/harrys/status/932281879507685376
There’s always Dollar Shave Club.
Not so. I have a very light growth and shave twice a week or so. I simply order what I want from Harry’s online as I desire.
I like the blades and really like the shave gel. And now, the body wash. So it is hardly a scam. Besides, they have sponsored Ricochet podcasts in the past, so points for that.
Smart marketing. Jimmy Fallon does it too. Screw the majority and go for a base. Obama did it. Trump does it. Smart marketing in a sharply and passionately divided nation. Heck, even Pajama Boy gotta shave.
If all the razor companies go SJW, conservatives will be easily identified by their non-hipster beards.
Get woke, go broke.
This makes me glad I don’t have a television feed of any kind.
Young people (think Millennial age group) have not made their permanent selection of male grooming products yet, so most ads are geared towards that age group (it’s the same with beer and other things). Because many men in that age group have been indoctrinated by the left and its PC sharia, appealing to their sense of “fairness” might work.
I remember ages ago reading a study that suggested most young men use the male grooming products of their fathers. This is true in my case. While my biological father died just before I turned 4, my grandfather was the male figure in my early life, and I’ve been using Old Spice products ever since.
Bottom line: it won’t affect me, but I did switch from cheap bags of twin-blade razors to Harry’s a couple of years ago. I keep the twins for emergencies, but I use the Harry’s most of the time.
Hmmmmm . . . maybe older folks do change their products after all. Okay, now I think Gillette stepped in it big time . . .
Boys will be boys because boys are boys. There are certain physical factors, such as testosterone, that make them more aggressive (which is neither a good nor bad trait, just one that needs to be directed in the right direction). When you try to stop boys from being boys I have seen two possible outcomes. Either you create a wuss who is passive and afraid to act (and eventually might snap) or an overly macho jerk who overreacts because he doesn’t understand what true manhood is. Which do they want?
So usually when a company does something like this, they have a plan to cash in all wokeness credits they accumulate. I’m not sure how they do it from this ad. Possible lobbying power in DC due to being the Social Justice company? I don’t see it.
They basically tried to shame an entire gender/customer base. Where do they think the payoff comes?
Girlfriend just posted on Facebook how much she likes this ad. What do I do?
Dump her?
Some of us are approaching 40.
Get a new girlfriend.
I mean, you can choose to live dangerously…
Its going to come up sooner or later. Privately tell her that you don’t like the ad, and why. It could be something she hadn’t considered, it could be aspects of each other you’re both willing to tolerate, it could be an indicator of incompatible moral principles or worldviews. Whatever it is, you’re going to have to talk about these sorts of differences.
Of course, anyone who listens to relationship advice coming from me is an idiot.