If your company is trending under the hashtag #GetWokeGoBroke, you know your marketing team has really screwed the pooch.
A couple of years ago, one soap company did a PSA about women being more naturally beautiful than they think they are. You may have seen it, there was a forensic sketch artist drawing how the women perceived themselves set side-by-side with how another artist drew them by looking at them.
It was well-received by the public.
Gillette made a PSA of their own, hoping to build themselves as a socially-aware brand in the process. They picked up on the ‘Toxic Masculinity’ theme so popular among our self-appointed social consciences in academia and online.
It backfired.
Badly.
It opened with their ‘best a man can get’ tagline showing on a screen which ripped apart as a boy being chased by bullies ran through it. Then they cycled through a series of anti-guy sterotypes listing some of the favorite ways that society likes to call men ‘problematic’.
They assumed a sterotype of their own. That of a nagging schoolmarm, or an overbearing mother-in-law.
That’s not a great move by a company that hocks their product to those of us blessed with an abundance of Testosterone.
Some of the social-justice conformists lapped it up like the lemmings they are, but even some of the left were annoyed by how patronizing the ad was.
Forbes — which often runs pieces friendly to the left — ran an article that said:
As Gillette has come under increasing competition from low priced competitors such as Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s, along with a resurgent Schick who is offering refill cartridges that fit Gillette razors, its market share has dropped from 70% to 50% over the past decade. Gillette has been forced to drop the price of its razors by about 15% over the past few years and is on the verge of losing master brand status.
…Reaction to “We Believe in the Best in Men” has been overwhelmingly negative, with comments on its own Youtube channel running negative by an astonishing ten to one margin. There are those who really like the ad really like the campaign a lot and argue that it is simply trying to reinforce positive behavior. However, the much larger group who dislikes it includes many men who are saying the ad is insulting to men and full of stereotypes. What is perhaps most dangerous for Gillette, however, is the large number of posters who are threatening to never buy the product again.
…The shame of all of this is that Gillette surely could have devised a campaign focusing on positive encouragement of good behaviors without making sweeping generalizations about men and what it is to be masculine. The brand could have taken a lesson from the famous “Always: Like a Girl” Super Bowl ad from 2015 which delivered an almost universally well received message about female empowerment in a positive way. As it stands “The Best a Man Can Be” managed to unnecessarily alienate many of the companies customers, including many good men who largely agree with the underlying issues addressed in the ad.
Meanwhile, social media was blowing up over their campaign in all the ways Gillette did NOT want it to:
Nearly 100,000 thumbs down. pic.twitter.com/BtBmv86uE5
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) January 15, 2019
Wow. Being a shaving company and finger wagging at men for toxic masculinity AND featuring @TheYoungTurks prominently in your ad?
Bold strategy, Cotton. Hope that #GetWokeGoBroke principle firmly bites you in the assets. https://t.co/LlvR1LREX4
— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) January 14, 2019
Who exactly is Gillette imagining will buy these sissy man razors? Men won’t, feminist boys don’t shave much, and neither do the feminist women. 🤷♀️
— Inez Stepman ⚪️🔴⚪️ (@InezFeltscher) January 15, 2019
https://twitter.com/EWErickson/status/1085205887579508736
The new Gillette ad is the best commercial for Dollar Shave Club I've ever seen.
— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) January 15, 2019
I used to love beating up kids at barbecues. Now I realise that is wrong. Also, my balls have never been smoother. Thanks, Gillette.
— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) January 15, 2019
Sorry, Ricky. We’re not sure the marketing team at Gillette could relate.
It’s not the part about shaving their balls so much as their even having any, shorn smooth or otherwise.
The Imam of Peace thought of some truly courageous ways they might have encouraged improvements to male behavior.
https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/1085174465992974336
But that would take us back to the issue of ‘having any’, now wouldn’t it?
Congrats, Gillette. You’re the reason #GetWokeGoBroke is trending.
It’s a pretty safe bet that Harry’s Razors, Dollar Shave Club and Schick all thank you for your vigorous Virtue Signaling and hope you continue to do so until the day you become nothing more than a cautionary tale in Business School.
Pussification: The Effeminization Of The American Male
by Doug Giles
Doug Giles, best-selling author of Raising Righteous And Rowdy Girls and Editor-In-Chief of the mega-blog, ClashDaily.com, has just penned a book he guarantees will kick hipster males into the rarefied air of masculinity. That is, if the man-child will put down his frappuccino; shut the hell up and listen and obey everything he instructs them to do in his timely and tornadic tome. Buy Now: Pussification: The Effeminization Of The American Male
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