The Best a Person with a Beard Can Get?

[OneFootintheRave]

This ad and tag line for a popular shaving brand has been around for decades. It's in heavy rotation atm due to the football.

Does anyone know if this brand has been targeted / lobbied to change the wording to gender neutral? In the same way some feminine hygiene brands have?

www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/05/gillette-just-released-groundbreaking-ad-trans-mans-first-shave/

Looks like they’ve incorporated their original tagline into their trans marketing strategy. Presumably they will be using their pink ranges to appeal to transwomen? They’ll find a way to convert trans to pounds. Consumerism as validation.

Ah ok. I thought they must have adopted some kind of position on the matter.

It was Gillette who ran that ad basically calling their customers toxic males and their sales went through the floor

www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-46874617

Well, thats the MRA take. What the ad actually did was say its time for men to step up, especially for other men and boys.

'' the company asks "Is this the best a man can get?" before showing images of bullying, sexual harassment, sexist behaviour and aggressive male behaviour.
It then shows examples of more positive behaviour - such as stepping into prevent these behaviours when they happen in public.''

Men who take offence at that advert have toxic attitudes.

@GrandmaSteglitszch

Men who take offence at that advert have toxic attitudes.

Unfortunately that's a lot of men.

I think most people don't like being lectured by profit-seeking corporations on social issues - whether it's sexism, racism, LGBT etc.
You sell products. Stick to adverts that focus on it. If I wanted a moral lecture on how to be a better person, I'd go to church.

I doubt most lazy arsed men could be bothered to change brands, because an ad campaign didn't make them feel like a big, strong, firefighter puppy rescuer anymore.

@NonnyMouse1337

I think most people don't like being lectured by profit-seeking corporations on social issues - whether it's sexism, racism, LGBT etc. You sell products. Stick to adverts that focus on it. If I wanted a moral lecture on how to be a better person, I'd go to church.

This

Any more than women want to be lectured on LGBT rights, through rainbow washed ad campaigns run by total hypocrite corps who wouldn't run the same ad in Dubai.

It would be interesting to analyse who actually benefits from commercial adverts that have zero effect in changing human behaviour. I suppose it does generate a lot of social media interactions and airtime in the news. Any publicity is good publicity.

@NonnyMouse1337

It would be interesting to analyse who actually benefits from commercial adverts that have zero effect in changing human behaviour. I suppose it does generate a lot of social media interactions and airtime in the news. Any publicity is good publicity.

The only people who benefit from bad advertising is the media companies that sell the space.

But most advertising works. Companies that stopped advertising in the 2008 recession (went media dark) recovered far more slowly (5x slower growth) than competitors who increased ad spend in the downturn. This is because top of mind awareness is the main driver of brand choice.

BUT building a brand that people like and share values with also drives significant growth over and above just driving awareness.

Gillette had haemorrhaged share in the 5 years prior to the 'best a man can be' ad (~70% to 52%) mostly because of dollar shave club / Harry's stealing share and driving prices down. I think they actually stabilised share for the first time in years after the ad. This could just be because Dollar Shave had plateaued having converted those who were easy to convert and struggling to persuade the next tier of more mass, less motivated buyers.
It's hard to tell the long term impact because Covid has hit shaving hard (like most personal grooming).

That's really interesting ThinkAboutItTomorrow. Thanks for explaining.

BUT building a brand that people like and share values with also drives significant growth over and above just driving awareness

Isn't that the problem, though, with woke advertising. The gullible think some huge corporate shares their values. Nike supports BLM whilst exploiting poor, dark skinned, underage labour. Lots of fast fashion promote their "conscious" collections of supposedly environmentally friendly clothing (much of it really isn't) whilst exploiting poor labour forces in places like Bangladesh. Lots of, e.g., law firms palled up with Stonewall and splashed this all over their brand, but one look at the people in the top jobs shows you that the white, straight, men in charge are just paying lip service and not moving over to make a more diverse workforce. Obviously the advertisers are earning their money hoodwinking the masses.

There's certainly a shit load of 'woke washing', which seems to be the heir to green washing.

Typically well meaning marketers (like me ☺️) do truly believe in the power of brands to do good. And see plenty of data that shows commercially it works. So brands start off talking a good game but with huge say - do gaps. But gradually, often prompted by activists pointing out hypocrisy, companies realise they need to practice what they preach and fix things behind the scenes.

As with most things, people don't set out to be horribly cynical and those of us who've sold out to capitalism still like to kid ourselves we aren't evil.

But adland is populated by young urbanites. This means they live in a bubble and reflect their world view much more than the real interests of the main people who buy their stuff.