Perhaps because people love any prompt to argue on the internet, many progressives responded with support for Gillette’s message—even if it was sometimes tinged with skepticism—and a viral ad was born. Gillette may not have anticipated exactly this magnitude of reaction, but in stepping into what many Millennials see as a leadership void left by ineffective government and cultural leaders, it’s become the latest example of exactly what many marketers think brands have to do to communicate with the next generation of shoppers.

“The intention was not to be political at all,” according to Pankaj Bhalla, the North American brand director for Gillette. While it’s unclear whether it’s even possible to take on a social issue without being political in the current American cultural climate, Bhalla thinks brands feel pressure from Millennial and Gen Z shoppers to step beyond the bounds of straightforward consumer-product marketing. “I think it is important to stand for more than the product’s benefit that you provide, and I think that’s the expectation of our younger audiences,” he says.

It’s too early to know if Gillette’s campaign will pay dividends for the brand, but social-responsibility marketing is a method with a considerable history, dotted with notable success stories. Most famously, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty kicked off years of viral ads and dozens of imitators by explicating the ways that personal-care marketing capitalizes on women’s insecurities. More recently, Nike’s Just Do It campaign gained broad attention by casting the NFL social-justice pariah Colin Kaepernick as its most prominent face.

Although skeptics point out that these initiatives often offer consumers few solutions to social problems beyond buying a company’s products, it seems like younger shoppers do want brands to weigh in on larger issues. According to a recent survey by the market-research firm Sprout Social, 66 percent of American consumers want companies to take public stands on social and political problems. The researchers ultimately concluded that doing so offered brands greater reward than it did risk, even though gaffes are possible. (Remember that Pepsi ad in which Kendall Jenner made peace between protesters and police by offering one officer a beverage?)

Read: Pepsi’s ad was a total success

So what’s motivating teens and young adults to look to brands for moral leadership? “As trust goes down in institutions, people are looking for somebody to step up to the plate,” says Peggy Simcic Brønn, a professor of communication and culture at the Norwegian Business School in Oslo who has tracked social-responsibility marketing for more than two decades. “NGOs and governmental institutions, which we depend on to address bad things, they’re not doing it. So who’s left to do it? That’s business.”