Why Did the New Gillette Ad Backfire so Horrendously?

How did the shaving brand introduce a seemingly positive message in a way that garnered so much backlash?

Gillette’s Appropriated Slogan: Youtube

After watching the mayhem of Gillette’s new advertisement unfold in the hours following its release, it calls to question how such a seemingly positive message was received so poorly on the internet?

I nearly shrugged it off as some sort of anomaly where trolls had ransacked the comments section across a variety of platforms and discoloured the underlying message of the video. But after I watched the clip a couple of times, I wasn’t too hard pressed identifying the fundamental reasons as to why this ad became so viral for all of the wrong reasons. The first being;

People do not want to be instructed on morality by corporations that sell consumer goods.

Advertising is not the realm of moral instruction. When you deliver a moral message that you want to have a lasting impact, there is literally no worse way to undermine that message than by sticking a corporate logo on the end of it. It comes across as instinctively shallow, opportunistic and self-serving. This style of morally intuitive advertising was a very common tactic in the 60’s and 70’s, but that’s because viewers were generally speaking: “marketing illiterate”. People didn’t see many ads and they didn’t understand the ploys that advertisers used to get them to put their wallets on the line. However, our generation is very different. We have grown up surrounded by ads, and we have developed a relatively good sense for ads that employ shifty tactics.

Gillette is a company that sells razors and other shaving aids. It is not a place that people go to for lessons on moral principles, and when viewers feel as though they are being lectured by a brand on already inflammatory principles such as their own emotional intelligence, or the fundamentals of their behaviour, they are quick to react in a way that defends their ideals from such unnecessary and uninvited prodding.

Speaking broadly; the social justice movement that Gillette has so desperately tried to monetise, is not a unanimous movement. There are many, many sides and warring factions that offer critiques on the styles of politics and activism being offered by the new-left movement. Not all areas of social justice are inherently good, and Gillette has so foolishly stumbled into the virtual melting pot of millions of volatile political opinions.

The marketing team at Gillette obviously thought that appropriating their slogan from: “The Best A Man Can Get”, into: “The Best Men Can Be”, was a nifty way of weighing in on a social justice issue that would place them upon the viral pedestal of online moral virtue. But instead many viewers just saw it, and the entire message that was layered into the film clip as an opportunistic, condescending and primarily virtue-signaling move from a company that they solely want to buy razors from. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the message in the film clip. It is important that men call out sexist and derogatory behaviour when they see it. But when a corporation whose sole function is to sell devices that remove facial hair, begin to assert that it is their place to tell men how they can be more morally responsible, it’s no wonder why some feel as though Gillette have played the wrong note.

It’s not just that Gillette has seemingly hit the wrong chord with viewers, it’s also partially due to the fact that their message resonated so deeply with hundreds of thousands of condescending messages that men have heard countless times before from all corners of new left-wing movements that seek to push an agenda they not only dislike, but quite often despise. Gillette stuck their nose into a political bees nest expecting to only get honey, but instead, they got stung.

Neither men nor women, want to be lectured about their emotional intelligence and moral behaviour by a company they just want to buy god damn razors from. Again, it isn’t that Gillette tried to stand up for something they thought was morally valuable and accidentally hit a wrong chord; it’s because they approached it in such a way that undermined themselves at every single turn.

A simple cross-section of a few of the top comments seems to summarise the general opinion regarding the ad:

All of the comments were the usual style of generally sarcastic online jabs, that seek to make sub-memes of the content within the video to get likes.

However, after visiting the video multiple times to re-watch it, I realised that the moderators of Gillette’s Youtube account had in fact been deleting the negative comments that were gathering the most likes beneath the video. If you visit the video HERE you will find that all the negative comments will have time-stamps that are less than a few hours old, and there are repeated comments saying that their comments have been deleted before. It’s a multi-million dollar corporation acting like a nervous teen deleting negative comments on their Instagram photos.

Doing this not only reflects the lack of solitude and confidence that Gillette has in their new campaign because they are so obviously fearful of criticism; it speaks to the heart of their issue. They are so concerned with their public image, they are willing to do anything that delivers them social praise. Which means that they are also willing to make an advertisement that is so obviously an effort to monetise “progressive” social movements, and reflects such an icky form of capitalistic opportunism that even people unconcerned by the warring politics of SJW’s and right-wingers are weighing in on the sheer stupidity of its campaign.

Gillette can seemingly not dig its marketing hole any deeper. There are now a series of counter-movements forming to boycott their products, which I feel is definitely too harsh of a reaction for a misplaced ad. But it does just go to show: not all publicity is good publicity.

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Thomas Mitchelhill

|Philosopher

|Political Analyst

|Existence Enthusiast