By now, you've probably heard about the Gillette ad that lectures us men and demands we stop being jerks.
I don't see this as an anti-bullying ad, plus anti- all the rest of the hideous behaviors so common in men, but as an anti-man ad. Let me know if you can calculate the odds of Gillette running similarly critical ads aimed at women, blacks, gays and transgendered, albino Mexicans without a scientific calculator. I get it, Gillette. Men are horrible people and without you hectoring us, we're likely to set fire to an orphanage after raping someone.
That's all fine, but the most interesting part was the online reactions from bloggers and vloggers. The professional advertising blogs were almost all positively disposed towards the thing. The manosphere vloggers were completely enraged. What bubbles the advertising pros inhabit! Maybe it started in their universities where people with inappropriate opinions were banned from speaking.
If you're an advertiser, it might be a good idea to have some sense of your target market so you don't create something all of your pious, self-important prog friends love, but utterly torches your reputation with the Normals.
Bonus Tidbit: Here's the best reaction I read.
I've been involved in marketing for decades: in copywriting and sales, plus audio-visual, television, and radio production, along with more than 20 years of researching, studying, and teaching as a marketing professor. I've reviewed advertising going back a century or more.
I have never – never! – seen a more socially and commercially destructive advertisement than the new Gillette "We believe: The best men can be" video. My posted comment on Gillette's You Tube site: "What are you people thinking?" ...
From a commercial standpoint, the rationale of the ad – such as it is – is insane. Men are the biggest purchaser of razors, and Gillette, which has had its share of competitive problems lately, has gone out of its way to insult its primary customers. Unlike the thrust of some other ads, the customers or prospects are being insulted not because they might have scraggly beards, have sloppy shaves, or are using a different product. The foundation of the ad is that the target audience is insulted just for being.
Actually, I think Gillette is looking at the Kaepernick/Nike foofaraw from a few months back. While that made a lot of people mad and raised a lot of boycott threats, everything I have seen about the aftermath says that it did, in fact, substantially increase Nike's sales, to the tune of several billion (!) dollars.
ReplyDeleteI think Gillette waited just long enough to see if the whole business was a net gain for Nike, and have evidently decided that it was. And now they want a piece of that. If it also ends up paying off for Gillette, you can expect to see more of this sort of thing.
Again, not that it matters to me. I don't use Gillette products. I shave with an old-style safety razor and use the same blade for weeks, spending maybe two or three dollars a year on the cheapest available razor blades. I am not their target customer, any more than I was a customer for Nike's too-narrow shoes.
I take your point, but I think this is qualitatively different. Nike decided to support Black Lives Matter. Gillette is just telling all men that they hate us.
ReplyDeleteI don't get the stupidity, either.
ReplyDeleteAmazing how successful the Progs' indoctrination has been, all these high falutin' senior executives with their high falutin' University degrees and absence of common sense. No wonder they all hate DJT, he saw through it and them and went on the attack. The situation and the man are Churchilian, seriously.
ReplyDelete