Gillette place their bet - "the boys watching today, will be the men of tomorrow"

I imagine that the marketing leadership at Gillette have spent the last few days rushing in and out of emergency meetings, desperately hoping that they are going to wake up from what it’s safe to assume is their worst nightmare of a week. And from what I've seen and heard in the media and from the public, I’d say their worry is understandable. I’m talking of course about Gillette’s new advert that rugby tackles 2018’s biggest headlines on, what is provocatively being termed, ‘toxic masculinity’.

To have avoided an encounter with even a fraction of the emotional onslaught that has hit the press and social media in reaction to Gillette’s re-imagining of it’s one and only mantra 'The Best a Man Can Get', wow you must be busy and important. But sorry, I’m not going to catch you up on the story. Google it. 

“Whilst I’m glad I’m not the guy who said ‘trust me on this’, for what it's worth, I don't think Gillette are going to look back on this as a historic marketing disaster”

It's hard to imagine that this advert, released on Monday, was an easy feat for Gillette. Quite the opposite is my guess. We are talking about a brand that has played it safe for the best part of 30 years. A brand who's most profound marketing move in recent times has been to sponsor the ‘Kiss Debate’ on ABC’s The Bachelor...

And there's a very good reason why Gillette have remained so vanilla in their marketing, and why until now, that has worked to their advantage. In short, they know their audience. Or more to the point, they understand the diverse nature of their audiences - that they are selling razors to men across the globe, to men from 17 to 97, to men of different beliefs and opinion, of different races and nationalities, from Tom Daley to Donald Trump – it's a fairly big chunk of the world...

To dip a toe into some of the most heated and controversial debates of the last year will have been considered a high risk strategy (even by the most renegade of Gillette employees).

So to disregard toe dipping, and instead opt for a full swan dive into these issues, we can only assume has been a mammoth undertaking, requiring a hell of a lot of data driven persuasion internally, to prove that this move was ‘going to work’.

And whilst I’m glad I’m not the guy who said ‘trust me on this’, for what it's worth, I don't think Gillette are going to look back on this as a historic marketing disaster. I suspect that once the dust has settled, the impact on the brand will not be as catastrophic as has been billed. In fact, it may well be framed as a turning point. 

Let me get this on record, I am not saying that Gillette have nailed their 2019 marketing, and am certainly not saying that they have flawlessly executed whatever strategy sits behind this new content. I found the advert clichéd and poorly thought through - using phrases such as 'toxic masculinity' has simply served to aggravate and politicise what was, in my opinion, otherwise, a very meaningful and positive message. They managed to butcher that positivity by vilifying the very stereotypes that their marketing had, until now, celebrated. In the process 'betraying' swathes of their customers.

But we’ve heard a lot about where Gillette have gone wrong. So here are three reasons that I'm not convinced the brand have signed their own death warrant with this ad... 

“Desperate and devious?”

Firstly, lets talk about the media reaction – from both the public and the press. To start with, we had the overwhelming number of ‘Dislikes’ that the advert received on it's YouTube channel. When initial reports came out, it was something like 10-1 ‘Dislikes’ to ‘Likes’, and this was furthered by other social media negativity, and even a hashtag “BoycottGillette”. Damaging stuff. To accompany this, much of the media have critiqued the advert, and chosen to play it safe themselves, by highlighting the ways and means with which Gillette have offended men, have generalised about men, and worst of all, have used ‘Cause Based Marketing’ to try and reclaim some market share (desperate and devious?). 

But even this week, if you go back to the Gillette Facebook page, if you go back to the YouTube channel, and if you start to read more of the articles emerging on this subject, you will see the tailwind has been less unkind. What the extreme negative backlash has managed to do, is spur those who may have left the issue uncommented on, to actually stand up and support Gillette’s message. YouTube ‘Likes’ are creeping back, we are now at roughly 2-1 ‘Dislikes’ to ‘Likes’... and what's to say that statistic won't continue to improve? 

On the day of the ad's release, any social listening tool would have documented a spike in negative comments for the brand, however, those same tools recorded an even bigger surge in positive comments the following day, far outweighing the negativity of the first. According to the social media analytics provider Sprout Social over 60% of references to @Gillette since Monday have been positive, a statistic it’s unlikely you’ve heard much about. 

Perhaps the imbalance will slowly be righted. After all, anger and dissatisfaction are far greater catalysts for commentary than acceptance is, so let’s watch out for the backlash against the backlash. I''m not kidding.

“We keep forgetting about the large proportion of people who quietly sit in the centre of political debates”

This leads me smoothly (watch me avoid the shaving pun) onto my second point - which is about the lately forgotten silent majority. Headlines these days are driven by twitter storms, by #campaigns and so on. Of course, much of the time this is exciting and promising, with otherwise unheard voices using social media as a way to amplify important messages and get the world talking about minority issues.

But equally, we forget that the vocal minority, are sometimes, exactly that, the minority. A sobering fact about this online voice which so often dictates our media agenda, is that according to the AI segmentation platform Affinio only about 10% of social media users engage online. The rest (approx 90%) are consuming social media content without making their voices heard. Do you see where I'm going with this? 

I read an interesting article in the Guardian the other day decreeing 'Populists are not a silent majority - they're just a loud minority', citing a Pew study that showed how the media narrative about surging western populism was off course and that traditional parties were still widely preferred – reminding us again that despite our increasingly alarmist media, we keep forgetting about the large proportion of people who quietly sit in the centre of political debates, and are fatigued and afraid of powerful voices at the extreme ends of the spectrum... are we forgetting them again in the wake of this fresh outrage? 

“Whether you are offended or won over, sick of brands peddling self-righteous rhetoric or defending Gillette’s bold move, it may not actually matter”

Finally, let’s go back to one of the first things I mentioned; understanding your audience. Audience insights are not just about knowing your 'now' consumers. Gillette has made it clear decade after decade that they understand the composition of their customer base and who their heartland audience is (the all American man?). But I'm going to guess that looking ahead; they are all too conscious of which audiences they are losing hand over fist; namely young Millennials and the elusive Generation Z. It’s these younger audiences, recognised as consumer powerhouses, and projected to have unparalleled purchasing power in the coming decade who are being enticed away by dynamic, humorous brands such as Dollar Shave Club, Harry’s and Bulldog, all whom offer a young, fresh take on men’s grooming, who talk to these men in a way they identify with (oh, and at the same time undercut Gillette on price).

Gillette on the other hand has been battling to continue to please the whole spectrum of their customer base, and in the process failing to be anything to anyone. 

Both a blessing and a curse, of course, is that as market leader, Gillette still has the ear of the world. It's possible that this advert was their big audience gamble. To go after the high value customers they've been losing, at the risk of alienating some of their more loyal contingent.

But even so, how does a behemoth like Gillette, who walks a tightrope of appeal every day compete with small and flexible brands that routinely court controversy in their marketing without breaking a sweat, brands that have nothing to lose and everything to gain with consumers.

Well Gillette clearly felt that they had an authority that these little guys did not, to tackle some of the moral and ethical issues facing men today, and saw an opportunity by doing so, to engage their younger audiences, recognising the significant shift in these segments' expectations around a brand’s role and responsibility in society.

As mercenary as the move will have been, perhaps Gillette saw the idea of 'decency' as a common thread that could bind its audiences together – and I doubt they were wrong. But sadly, as we’ve seen on numerous occasions in recent years (I’ll give us all a moment to recall that time Kendall Jenner resolved a Black Lives Matters riot with a can of Pepsi), the tactless way that the brand chose to convey that message ended up offending and angering a large portion of its own. The only thing is, whether you are offended or won over, sick of brands peddling self-righteous rhetoric or defending Gillette’s bold move, it may not actually matter, if their end goal was to talk to someone else. To those “someones” who we see repeatedly rewarding brands for sticking their neck out.

No, it’s unlikely they had any idea of the scale at which they would p**s some of their loyal customers off, but maybe their gamble was more calculated than we give them credit for. Conscious of the urgent imperative to re-engage a younger audience, they have perhaps put a wager on this ad inspiring more of those drifting Millennials & Gen Z's to admire and identify with a brand (that until this week had lost all relevance in their lives), than the number they will, genuinely, lose.

Maybe talking to the boys of today, will cement a new relationship for Gillette with the men of tomorrow?