I am surprised it took Gillette this long to evolve
More than a revolutionary approach, the new Gillette ad is an example of yet another multinational playing cultural catchup, says Digitas’s Keith Byrne.
Some people are angry and threatening to never buy Gillette products ever again. Others think the brand’s new campaign is an honest and timely statement reflecting how a modern man should act. Either way the new campaign from P&G is a clear winner.
When I first saw the two-minute long film, I certainly didn’t feel angry like the many men (and some women) who have stated they will never buy Gillette ever again. Nor did I feel I was watching something truly groundbreaking.
Don’t get me wrong, the film is well executed by Kim Gehrig (This Girl Can, Viva La Vulva) and comes with obvious and timely statements on bullying, toxic masculinity and the #metoo movement. Statements I fully agree with.
Top of mind yes, but not for the right reasons. Advertising campaigns need to sell things not try and change the world. I wasn’t that worked up by the advert but my wife certainly was. She was so annoyed that she signed me up for dollar shave club. Looking forward to trying out a new brand of shaver.
Keith, you might want to increase your estrogen intake. No sense trying to pose as a man, especially after all of your lavish praise for a commercial by a man hater. You’re not woke, you’re just a dweeb who has surrendered to progressives.
You sound like a real piece of shit Gavin.
Immature and the archetype of a person that this very ad was addressing.
The irony is that, as Keith mentioned above, your partner / wife / girlfriend will keep buying you Gillette razors (and I vouch that you will simply out of habit).
…So enjoy taking jabs on industry comment threads, your outrage means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
Some wild assumptions there. Gavin is clearly going to die alone.
+1
Latest reports indicate Gav got a care package of Gillette razors delivered to the basement / his bachie pad by his mum.
Interesting take on the ad, but way off base and off target.
If you want to educate, you need to start with a positive (after all you want to reinforce postive behavior).
This ad fails on so many levels, but it’s alienating it’s current market. Perhaps some womens groups might support their products but giving their pricing model (which charges more for pink identical razors) I’d suggest it’s unlikely.
The good news is that it’s changed my buying habits – I have been using their products since I was 14…. so just over 30 years… I’ll be looking elsewhere for my next purchase and my son’s wont be using their products either.
So, presumably, before the ad you were still happy with your Gillette gear, yeah?
The actual product itself hasn’t changed. Your ability to shave your face to a familiar finish, while holding a shaver by a familiar handle, hasn’t been impacted in any way, right?
So you’re deliberately going to risk ending up having to pay more, or get a shaver that doesn’t shave quite the way you like, forever, for the rest of your life, because somebody made a preachy video you didn’t like and put your preferred shaver’s brand on it?
And you’re so convinced that this attitude to men is so bad and wrong and harmful, you’re not only going to stop using the shavers you think are best for shaving hair off your face, you’re also going to forbid your sons from using ANY Gillette-branded products too?
What if your sons say “look dad, I know that ad is against everything you’ve brought us up to believe in, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Gillette shavers are the ones we like the best for cutting hair off our face. We need a good shave more than we need to continuously for all time deliver a message that Gillette won’t even hear that saying mean things about men is bad”?
I’m saying, what if your sons defy your principled stand against using Gillette razors? Will you disown them?
Even worse – what if one of them decides to use, and I’m sorry to have to use this language but it’s the context yeah… an ELECTRIC razor?!
I saw a post on Reddit actually, but it got deleted, that Gillette was really sweating because of the potential loss of the rape-apologist market. I’m not saying that’s you, I’m saying you have allies in this boycott, and it’s making Gillette squirm.
What are you going to do Seb – ban your sons from using Gillette for their entire lives!
For someone that hates being told how to think, you seem comfortable telling your kids how to.
I dislike this ad. It is condescending, hollow and transparently trying to be controversial to get free media coverage. Oh, advertisers have discovered PR but forgot the substance? YAWN. NEXT.
Could not agree more, and the response is partly due to the creative direction and not the concept itself.
Wow. It’s an ad, trying to pull on some emotional heartstrings. If this offends you so much as to not buy the product then I really do feel sorry for you.
It’s an absolute pathetic, despicable joke, yet sadly just another sign of our (Idiocracy)times.Just like the patheticly placating-to-leftist pathetics at Audi and a million other recent exs in recent yrs https://t.co/CaIInp2ZGt). When will these pathetics ever learn?? Doesn’t matter HOW MUCH you kiss leftist ass — YOU’RE STILL forever the 1% villains to the dangerously backward, divisive elements in society https://t.co/mNcYrSefif.
Oh what a white knight you are Keith.
Did you not see the Hannah Gadsby speech where she plain as day said ‘there are no good men’? So why bother trying to please these mentally ill man haters posing as ‘feminists’? When it boils down to it, they actually hate you because you are a man Keith. No matter what you do, how you behave, they will hate you. So why write these fawning op-eds ‘supporting’ them? It’s like when you hear gay people calling for tolerance of Islam and screeching about ‘Islamophobia’….when they would be amongst the first with there backs against the wall and a sword to there neck, if they lived in an Islamic nation.
Any man who ‘supports’ the model of feminism that is promoted by the sorts of women responsible for the Gillette computer….digging your own grave I’m afraid.
Who hurt you bud?
You’d be the type of guy who writes
“Go back to Islam!”
and
“JUST DEPORT THEM”
on fb news articles detailing (Australian born) gang activity.
Can’t consumers be free to not buy a product if they don’t like the way they market their shit? If they don’t like it they don’t like it, enough said. I doubt they’re all assholes and I doubt this is the only time an add or whatnot with a message similar to this one has been used to basically show only the bad side of masculinity and then act like “oh we didn’t say all men”.
We can question the intent forever but I think we can agree that the message was clearly not delivered well.
Nobody is criticising the man who quietly changes his razor brand because he disapproves of the ad but, because he’s a proper Aussie bush stoic type, he’s not going to go on about it, nobody wants to hear him banging on, the footy’s about to start etc.
The people we’re criticising are the ones who seem like they’re going to have a nervous breakdown unless the entire world acknowledges that they are offended by the ad.
“Why won’t you take my genuine distress and trauma seriously?” they scream. “Don’t you understand?! Gillette called me a rapist to my face! I need to feel that a lot of people have heard my bafflingly hyper-intense emotional reaction to a video someone else told me I was going to find really super distressing once I’d watched it! A rapist! And a wife-beater! Right to my face, over and over, every time I tapped the rewind control! I can’t function in a world where that video exists! Gillette needs to make it clear that my decision to withhold $14.95 from their bottom line is hurting them! AAAAAGH!”
Remember when a common criticism of the typical “Aussie bloke” was that he would never talk about his feelings or communicate what was really bothering him, he’d just go off and service the lawnmower or whatever?
Man, those were the days.
Snowflakes to the left. Snowflakes to the right.
Two ends of the same sh*tty stick.
I could not care less about this ad.
After so many years of men and boys being demonized and girls being brainwashed it is just another sad news article.
Maybe someday progressives will put the pieces togethor….
Good luck with your 20 cats ladies and Soyboy blue pilled Simps.
This campaign proves one thing.
Opinions are like arseholes – every one has one.
#respectallarseholes (_o_)
The only comment that made any sense.
An extension onto this from Tim Minchin.
– “but I would add that opinions differ significantly from arse-holes, in that yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined”
Tim Minchin, UWA address
I think it’s important we open up a conversation :
“All women are fat, lazy slobs who expect a man to bankroll their existence and are behind men only because they are totally self-centred and jealous of each other”.
Discuss.
I love this ad, but what they do next is more important, schools and training programmes for young men to learn to not be bullies, sexist and homophobic would be a great initiative. I don’t believe Gillette should have done this earlier. Right now, is the perfect time for this brand to take a stand. Any earlier and it would have being lost in the ether of white straight men killing the brand. Now they are overtaken by Gay, black and Transmen buying into what this brand is.
what is a transman? genuine question: woman to man or man to woman? It is important as their shaving needs may be very different (and surely the man to woman version would have already transitioned to Gillette’s lovely pink Venus razor).
The perfect riposte to Gillette’s onanistic virtue-signalling:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_HL0wiK4Zc
Mumbrella would do well to put it side by side, so everyone sees how shallow and shabby Gillette’s effort is.
Great ad! Quick to lean into the current man-thing! And adds a brand cache Gillette missed.
But in terms of sales – Gillette will rocket up. Any publicity is good etc.
“When I first saw the two-minute long FILM”
sorry, the wot? Lest we forget, this is an AD… to try make you buy stuff
New to self-important advertising types?
Well done Gillette. I have yet to see the advertisement air on lunar/satelite TV as yet. However I have seen the advertisement numerous time via news-outlets all passing there ten-cents worth. Genius free advertising in my opionon. As I man, I really don’t care about a companies core beliefs. Will this product leave me with smooth skin feeling refreshed after a shave. If that answer is still YES. Then I will continue to buy. PS, I kinda like the AD, it’s actually pretty good.
The AD was so good and effective at pushing its cultural agenda that the company took an 8 Billion Dollar write off. Well done.