Gillette's Risky Game
The first time I saw Gillette’s ad “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be”, I liked it quite a lot. Well-directed, sensitive, with a strong message – everything you would expect from a mainstay brand in the FMCG industry like P&G. It also caused the inevitable word-of-mouth and discussions on the social media. I commented on Twitter that the ad does remind me of the very successful “Real Beauty” campaign for Dove. This sentiment was later repeated in an article on CNN. Compare the two concepts on a deeper level and an important difference becomes obvious. The “Real Beauty” is about empowering women to discover their inner beauty (which, of course, they are urged to do by using the products of the company). Gillette’s campaign is about prescribing to its potential consumers how to behave and which moral norms to uphold. It is not very clear how is this directly related to product consumption.
As time progressed, the expected backlash from offended consumers of Gillette came. As it stands, the ratio of likes/dislikes on Gillette’s YouTube channel is about 1:3. Judging from the comments, the thought of the typical disgruntled Gillette razor buyer goes like that: “I am a heterosexual white man who has never done any of the bad things they show in the ad (or at least I think so)…why should they make me feel bad about my identity? And do they have the right to do so anyway?” There were also many complaints that the majority, if not all, of the men who serve as positive examples in the ad are actually African Americans in an obvious nod to political correctness. Another popular complaint was that Gillette actually deletes dislikes and negative comments from the YouTube channel. Inevitably, many people called for a boycott.
I will not go into a deep analysis whether these claims are true or not. It is a fact that many lifelong clients of Gillette were genuinely offended and many called for an apology from the company. What is really interesting for me is what exactly the goal of Gillette was? Let us explore the different possibilities:
1. REPOSITIONING – judging from the spot itself and the company’s own comments the main goal was to indeed reposition the brand from the 30+ year old and well-familiar slogan “The Best A Man Can Get” to “The Best Men Can Be”. At a glance it is a very small grammatic difference and the new slogan is closely related to the old one. In reality, they are light years apart and potential Gillette users are intelligent enough to understand that. The old slogan promises consistent quality (and I have to admit that this is the reason why I use Gillette to this day). The new slogan is aspirational and quite vague, as the definition of what consitutes a positive behaviour in men can be is a very subjective one. It is also socially, historically, and culturally determined. Thus the repositioning that might take place is from a very concrete place occupied by the brand in consumers’ minds to a vague and undetermined one.
Additionally, the company behind the brand positions itself as the “deus ex machina” who tells its consumers what is good and bad. This might not sit well at all in times when the buzzwords are self-empowerment and distrust in authorities. And, let’s face it, a commercial entity which aims exclusively at profit has little moral grounds to teach others about moral values. Of course, it may claim to be doing so from the position of a good corporate citizen. It still comes with the risks of being accused as overconfident and even a bit arrogant.
There is another simple reason why Gillette might see the need for repositioning from product qualities to abstract ones: product development opportunities in the razor industry seem to have struck a peak and nothing really new has happened in this field. One cannot keep adding blades and claim that six blades shave better than five (they do not) or that a vibrating shaver handle will change your shaving experience (it does not). It is a typical situation for a product industry which has reached the peak of its maturity stage and slowly starts declining because of changes in materials (blades live much longer), competing technology (e.g. better electric shavers, laser removal of hairs) or fashion trends (number of men with beards increases constantly year on year). From this point of view Gillette’s desire to reposition is easier to understand and justify.
2. GAINING NEW AUDIENCES FOR THE PRODUCT AND INCREASING SALES– if this was the goal, the company should aim at a long-term net positive result. In other words, the volume of business generated by new users who share these moral values and started buying the brand just because of that should be significantly higher than the loss of business caused by dissatisfaction and boycott. It is not quite clear to me what the actual profile of these new users would be. Having in mind P&Gs excellence in market research, I am sure that they have done their homework in this respect and have hopefully found the potential for a net positive outcome. Judging by the aforementioned ratio of positive and negative opinions, however, it is quite possible that their hopes might be in vain.
It also needs to be mentioned that razors fall in the category of products consumers use regularly and because of necessity. For majority of people a razor is simply a tool to remove unwanted hairs. They buy razors based on convenience, price advantage (hence the rise in cost-efficient solutions like the Dollar Shave club) or on per need basis. A smaller number of people actually pay more attention to the brand when using such products. These are normally consumers who do pay much more attention to body care and whose connection to their razor brand goes above the utilitarian level. These are theoretically the ones at which Gillette aims with their new campaign. On the other hand, they are very likely already using Gillette exactly because they care about high quality (and because the company is practically a monopolist in the field of shaving).
3. GENERATE POSITIVE WORD-OF-MOUTH AND GET PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT THE BRAND
Gillette’s campaign is inevitably seen in the context of #MeToo and Nike’s Colin Kaepernick campaign which generated a lot of positive buzz. Gillette did achieve that in the first days, causing a non-insignificant controversy and making people talk about it on social and other media. The key issue here is how did that impact the brand equity of Gillette. It will be extremely interesting to see how perceptual maps of consumers changed in time before and after the campaign and to see the impact on sales.
There is one last point worth mentioning here. The Gillette commercial was obviously created for the American market. In today’s connected world, however, it quickly spread everywhere, including in countries which are much less liberally minded and more conservative. Even if the campaign has a net positive effect in the Western World, it may turn out to have caused more harm than good to the brand worldwide.
In conclusion, “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be” is a highly controversial campaign with more obvious negative than positive consequences. Gillette is a highly-respected brand with а clear identity and а dominant market presence. One cannot help asking the question “Is it really worth risking all that for one minute of fame?” The answer may be “yes” if the people who manage the brand see the need to act decisively now in order to prevent inevitable decline. We obviously do not know that as we do not access to the data they have but it does seem a very risky move to make. It might also be an excellent opportunity for a competing brand to harvest disagreeing Gillette buyers with a campaign of the type "Real Shave For Real Men". On a more conceptual level, Gillette's ad brings to attention several important questions. How deep should companies go into the lives of their consumers? What type of discourse is works best for the brand’s overall health? What is the long-term impact on brand equity of such campaigns? And should companies bet their heritage just to be in line with perceived trends which may well turn out to be temporary? These questions are valid not only for Gillette but for all brands out there competing for your attention and wallet.
