I look forward to feeling proud to be a man in marketing
In the wake of Gillette’s ad controversy, Rob Cain is feeling positive about what it all means for the future of marketing to men.
Gillette started off 2019 with a bang when it released its two-minute video, ‘We Believe: The Best Men Can Be’, launching a campaign tackling toxic masculinity, violence against women and bullying in a world where, in the wake of the #metoo movement, discussions around gender are thankfully being brought to the fore.
The brand has inverted their traditional tagline ‘the best a man can get’ to provide a clarion call to its male audience, challenging men to be their best selves and stop excusing bad behaviour with the toxic ‘boys will be boys’ sentiment. It’s also a call to a male dominated marketing industry.
Although some critics claim Gillette is simply jumping on a trending topic, the brand is putting its money where its mouth is, vowing to donate $1 million a year for three years to non-profit organisations with programs “designed to inspire, educate and help men of all ages achieve their personal ‘best’ and become role models for the next generation.”
Surely the point of a razor ad is to sell more razors? Why does none of the commentary from the ad industry on this campaign use that as a metric for the ad’s success? If the ad doesn’t sell more razors, it’s been a massive fail regardless of what social message it’s sending.
No, the key metric is how much it helps marketers stroke their egos with their client’s money.
Sure, maybe if we lived in a purely capitalistic society that is geared towards maximising profits at the expense of everything else – but that would be a pretty depressing way to live.
Imagine working at Gillette and being told that your sole purpose is to sell razors… or maybe we should be asking more of brands. Perhaps they should be fostering an accepting workplace for their employees (and attract top talent), being honest with consumers, or trying to change the world for the better.
By the way, I think the ultimate decision to sign off this creative strategy did come back to the Gillette execs thinking it would get them more sales. Time will tell if they are right I guess
Seems to me you’re assuming that the sole role of marketing is to sell products. That’s a ridiculously simplistic, zero-sum type assumption.
Did you know that marketing can build brand perceptions, can help position brands for long term success and can contribute to positive corporate PR, which in turn keeps businesses in favour with shareholders and other stakeholders? Sales is one simplistic short term metric. These impacts are more important long term business health metrics. I’d argue they’re way more valid to keep an eye on than any sales uplifts.
Marketing is not a dumb function attached to the Sales dept any more. It’s much more than that. Or should be.
Because it just came out and nobody knows what effect it’s had on sales, if any. But we all gotta get our opinions out now while we can’t be proven wrong.
So the new wonderful paradigm is flatter women and bash men. There is nothing good or socially progressive about this.
Flattering people and suggesting that using the product in question will make your dreams come true, no matter how absurd the claim, has been the meat and potatoes of advertising for years. The much quoted Nike add falls squarely into this category
The new strategy, for men only, is to accuse them of being backward reprobates who need moral instructions from their betters, like a grocery company. This is no more moral than the old strategy. The only real difference is that it is far more likely to lose customers than win them.
It is also a completely hackneyed message! The media and advertising are already awash with this exact theme. It is has become a negative cliche. Gillette isn’t breaking new social ground, it isn’t creative, they are simply the last to jump onto a pile-on like school bullies. That is what infuriated men who already hear these negative messages every single day. Every man I have spoken to that is aware of this advertisement loathes it and Gillette. The only defenders seem to be marketers and advertising types.
You call donating $1 million to unspecified causes on $6 billion Gillette revenue “putting your money where your mouth is!” Anyone outside marketing would see this as a token gesture to pretend there is substance to an otherwise vacuous campaign. It would be like me throwing a 5c coin in the Salvos tin and thinking it gives me license to lecture everybody about poverty because “I’ve put my money where my mouth is”. Frankly, a 5c donation from me – or $1 million from a global corporate goliath – is worth than nothing – it’s an insult.
Rob,
Whilst your piece no doubt came from a good place it falls into the trap of regurgitating falsehoods:
1. You say “it’s a call to the male dominated marketing industry”. Wrong. ABS Census data from 2016 shows that the gender split within the employment group “Advertising, Public Relations and Sales Managers” is 59% male / 41% female. Hardly a sign of ‘domination’ (which you will find in say, carpentry (99% male / 1% female) or inversely, childcare (5% male / 95% female)
2. You reference a number of high profile murders, however, latest data from the National Homicide Monitoring Program shows that in Australia there is 1 homicide per 100,000 people. That’s about the same as in the UK or NZ. Hardly the stuff of nightmares.
3. Now compare the above stat to the death rate per 100,000 in certain industries – 8.2 for Machinery operators and drivers (courtesy of WorkSafe). So 8x more likely to die on the job than be randomly murdered. But because more than 90% of workplace deaths are male, they don’t warrant the coverage. Go figure.
Associating the message of the Gillette ad with the horrific murders of women in Melbourne is a very long bow, and not a little offensive. That the collective group of men be held accountable for the actions of a tiny minority is a tough sell.
Mental illness will not be solved by preaching to all but the handful of men who commit these crimes against women. Mental illness is not gender-skewed, but the simple fact that men tend to be bigger and stronger than women means that men can do far more damage when their demons take hold.
Identity politics is a strange beast. When yet another deranged fanatic yells “Allahu Akbar” while murdering innocents the calls from the social justice warriors are that it’s mental illness, not religious fanaticism, driving the perpetrators.
Why no loud and self-righteous message (or an ad campaign….anyone?) about the thousands of years of indoctrination of Islam to kill the infidels and a demand that all Muslims take responsibility for these crimes and act to stop them?
Preachy commentators can’t have it both ways. But men are an easy and acceptable target these days, so everyone is happy to pile on.
It appears that doing something positive to reduce mental illness and social isolation (across all identity constructs) is really difficult. So instead we get misguided and facile messages that serve only to drive a wedge between groups (in this case gender) where there doesn’t need to be one.
My word, advertising folk are in a huge bubble. Completely at odds with what is happening in the world around them. What real people think and do. This hyper-idealism has never been more obvious than in the industry’s reaction to this ad. The gap between ‘what this could/should mean’ and ‘what this actually means’ has never been so wide.
The Gillette ad is nothing but vapid posturing. A bit like this article…
Why are men being so sensitive? If you don’t rape, than don’t offended – it’s that simple. That’s exactly why they did this ad, you guys are the first to shout ‘NOT ALL MEN’ but none of you shout when a women is being disrespected, patronised or objectified in front of you by someone you know. So to you guys is more important that Gillete thinks of your sensitivity, rather than thinking of the victims. Guess what, no one thinks all males are shit – but raging on the internet saying ‘NOT ALL MEN’ its not helping at all – it is actually proving the point that you guys are happy with the current status quo. Or wait, so we can’t talk about homophobia because not everyone is a homophobe? We can’t talk about sexism – because not all of you are sexists? Stop the nonsense and stop having such fragile sensitivity – if you are not part of the bad men out-there, they you shouldn’t be offended. I’m so glad you wrote this piece Rob, it shows there are still rational men out there. I’ve showed this to my coworkers, my brothers and my dad and none of them were offended at all with the message – they said ‘it’s just teaching boys to be nice people’. If you are offended, you are part of the problem.
+1 to the final comment. “If you are offended, you are part of the problem”
A male friend of mine this week drew a very simple diagram to capture the essence of the umbrage.
He drew one big circle to represent masculinity (the good) and inside that large circle he drew one much much much smaller circle to represent toxic masculinity (the bad). His comment was simple – if you can’t grasp the difference, maybe you’re standing in the wrong circle.
I would suggest that the commentators bashing Gillete for any reason other than perhaps disagreeing with production elements of their ad should really reflect on which circle they are standing in.
Imagine that you are back at school. There is one kid in the class of 30 who is misbehaving: saying inappropriate things, throwing stuff across the class, etc.
The teacher says to the naughty kid: “if you don’t stop misbehaving, I’ll keep the entire class in during lunch” (the classic, ‘punish by peer’ method).
Sure enough, because the kid has a bad upbringing and doesn’t understand/ care about consequence, they keeps misbehaving and the entire class gets kept in.
You ask the teacher why the entire class should be kept in for the behaviour of one student – and rather than the teacher saying: “oh, it’s because of the naughty student”, the teacher instead turns around to you and says: “if you have a problem with this, you shouldn’t have been misbehaving”.
Now imagine you are just a regular guy, minding your own business. Some razor company tells you to be a better person. You say to the razor company: “I don’t like being spoken to like this” – and a bunch of people angrily turn around and say that “if you don’t like being spoken to like this, maybe you should stop being a bad person”.
You should show that simple diagram to the feminist producer of this clip so she can make an advertisement like that instead of the one she made which is the opposite. If she made an ad like that diagram, men might like it.
+1 to “So Sensitive” and “Are You Part Of The Problem”.
I cant understand why people get so worked up – eg – comments further up this thread on ‘vapid posturing’.
If you were a decent dude (i.e – not ‘woke’ or ‘new age’, just practical), you would have just watched the ad, thought ‘oh cool, great job by them’ and moved on with life.
Gilette aren’t out to steal penises! Grow up you sad little troglodytes!
It’s keyboard warriors like you that drive minority viewpoints into mainstream perspective. Once people don’t agree with your ‘we all equal except my viewpoint is better’, you lose the plot and start hurling insults. Read some Taleb and get wise.
Your Quote: “None of you shout when a women is being disrespected, patronised or objectified in front of you by someone you know.”
Hilarious – you have just confirmed exactly what we thought the ad was saying. We weren’t being oversensitive! You claim that “None” of us stands up for good. Rank sexism and prejudice from you that women would never accept directed against themselves. Completely wrong too. A lot of men including critics of this ad will stand up for a woman being disrespected. This kind of hatred being spread by feminists has to stop.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I understand that there is deep skepticism about the motives of marketing. So long as marketing is one of the most pervasive communicators of our time, I’ll continue to advocate for brands to take responsibility for the central social issues impacting both consumers and the culture within which they thrive. It is my belief and experience that there is great gender inequality in our culture. One woman’s death as a result of insidious devaluing of a woman’s worth is too many. As I mention in my piece, marketing can be both a perpetrator of cultural beliefs and an alarm for its need to change. Gillette’s ad — or any of the other examples of advocacy based marketing — is not blaming men. It is a clarion call for men to realise that they have the power to impact their society, and it is a rare acknowledgment that masculinity is diverse and that empathy is a human virtue and trait. For my readers who feel they are living in a world of gender equality, I hope that the world you are experiencing is one all women can experience in the near future.
Wrong. It was blaming men, claiming only “some” do the right thing when in fact the vast majority do. More importantly, men who virtue signal their feminism to others have proven to be some of the biggest abusers of women. Harvey Weinstein who started all of this was a self-avowed feminist who claimed to believe in “strong roles” for women and even participated in the Women’s March. Serial abuser of women Bill Clinton claimed to be a feminist. The list of male-feminist hypocrites is very long to the extent that it tells us nothing whatsoever about the real virtue of the individual. I have become completely cynical about men who claim to be feminists if there is any conceivable ulterior motive as there clearly is with Gillette.
Men and women are not the same so they do not and cannot experience life in exactly the same way. That means women, will have opportunities and difficulties that do not present themselves to men and the same with men. This does not mean that men and women are not equal and in general have equally good lives in this country.
Feminists, male or female, simply do not accept that men and women are fundamentally different putting differences in choices and behaviour down to social conditioning. It is a theory without a shred of any empirical backing but that doesn’t stop it underpinning the feminist view of the world. With this fallacious viewpoint as a basis any difference in outcomes, in wages, in gender proportions in professions and power positions, any negative experience that women have that men don’t to the same degree is taken as evidence of systematic discrimination against women when it is simply the natural result of free and equal people making the choices that best suit them.
Many men and women are sick and tired of self seekers endlessly whining of discrimination and demanding special privileges to combat a disadvantage that is not there. They are sick and tired of being told that men are oppressors and the source of all that is wrong in the world. And they are sick of advertisers adding to all the sick messaging in the cynical search for a buck.
No matter what opinion is held, the real value in all of this has been a) the conversation and debate, both within the industry and in the market, with the buying public, b) agitating the discussion over brand ‘purpose’, what it is, what it means and when it’s right or wrong and c) that marketing is a non-binary art form, with no single beacon of truth on which all brands head and multiple reasons for existing.
Which is another way of saying, whether it was Gillette now or some other brand in the near future (and it would’ve), we all needed it to happen. That it is a brand like Gillette, low-involvement, consumable, man-centred, is probably why it’s broken the way it has.
Either or, it’s a reckoning, of sorts. Not a ground-breaking, pole-shifting, moment of truth, but one of several waypoints we, as marketers, all need to go through to figure out why we do what we do, and how.
Whether the campaign is successful, whether Gillette sells more razors or not is probably, most likely, how this will be judged when the dust settles, rather than any social shift.
It was good to read your view and analysis Rob and thanks for putting it out there.
Yes! Yes! And more Yes Rob Cain. It is so encouraging to see the good men using their voices to create positive change in our industry, which impacts our economics and society. Rome has been burning for some time… https://mumbrella.com.au/while-rome-burns-we-are-busy-building-a-new-city-330826 …
As I have pointed out above – the men who publicly virtue-signal to women on these issues – public male feminists Harvey Weinstein, Bill Clinton, Al Franken, Louis C.K, Matt Lauer, Garrison Keillor etc – are no more “good” than the ones who support traditional masculinity and they are frequently much worse. The list of men taken down by #metoo is massively overweight with male liberal feminists who would publicly endorse an advertisement like this to make themselves look good. A man’s public endorsement of #metoo feminism does not make him “good” at all. The best men are the ordinary non-political family men at the barbecue who this advertisement caricatures and defames.
Yes. To paraphrase: let he who is without sin take a posturing position.
bec – “see the good men” implies there are many bad men who are doing nothing except being “toxic”. I don’t doubt that there are, just as I don’t doubt that there are just as many bad women. Escape the bubble.
There is nothing more transparently self-serving and self-righteous than the virture signalling of brands. Wat to shoot yourself in the foot, Gillette!