Gillette, known for making razors and not really being thought about at all, decided to make a bit of a stamp on the world with a new short film/advertisement the other day.
You can watch it here, it is extremely well done, with the gist of it being that men should take responsibility for the actions of other men, and work to eliminate the symptoms of toxic masculinity such as bullying, sexism, and thoughtless violence.
This is pretty much unacceptable to a lot of people, to the point that literally days after the original was posted you have to sift through several reaction videos with titles like "Gillette add anti-men", and much, much worse. These people are stupid and suck, which should go without saying but I like insulting them so there. They have decided to firmly and obviously come down on the "bullying is good" side of the debate because a company had the gall to say that people should hold each other accountable for their actions, they see examples of men doing cruel things to other men, women, and children and they think "Yes, this is what I want."
It's fair to say men have a way to go before we are healthy people to be around in general.
That backlash is easy to talk about, and to argue against, and nothing I can say about it will change even one mind, so today I am going to talk about another thing. Corporate wokeness.
Gillette is owned by Proctor and Gamble, and if the name is familiar to you it should be, they are a multi-national corporation with an intense level of penetration into a wide array of consumer goods, if you have ever shaved, done laundry, washed dishes, or yourself, you have certainly used one of their products.
Gillette doesn't actually care about you, or toxic masculinity in general is what I am saying. The add wasn't made out of a desire for cultural change, but rather a reaction to it. What they have decided is that taking a side in the "Should we be shitty people?" debate is marketable and are experimenting to find out exactly how marketable it is. The add was released without any(to my knowledge) press releases, and does not seem to have any associated programs, no sponsored lectures, or contests, no nonprofit or fund for the cause. Just the add released without other context, it is a piece of marketing exclusively.
This wouldn't be the first time a company did that of course, Nike decided to make Colin Kaepernick the face of some adds over the summer and took a little heat for that, but do any of us really believe that Nike as a whole is "woke" and truly interested in fighting for social justice? Anyone remember the exceedingly poorly executed attempt Pepsi made with Kendall Jenner to tie itself to the Black Lives Matter protests back in 2017? That one was the most blatant piece of marketing, and the most tone deaf, but it is much of a sameness with the other examples in this article.
I am not saying companies shouldn't push good messages in their advertising, in this world good things happen so rarely that it seems churlish to reject it out of hand when it happens for a bad reason. But we need to keep in mind that when a company pushes for social change they are invariably behind the times, that change has already begun and they are trying to buy in to it, not the other way around. And they can just as easily go the other way, in fact, some of Gillette's competitors in the men's shaving market are already doing just that, no adds as of yet, but their social media teams are all over welcoming the "men" who are ditching Gillette because of all this. If the controversy is too hard to bear, Gillette will wash their hands of the add and in a year or two, maybe less, we will see much more traditionally toxic advertising out of them as well.
Companies don't drive social change, they only hop on the bandwagon, and they do that poorly in many cases, advertisements like these need to be made, we need mainstream voices pushing that message, but always remember that the idea was mainstream enough before they started doing it, and it can just as easily go the other way.
No comments:
Post a Comment