Gillette's commercial “We believe: the best men can be” draws on the #MeToo movement urging men to hold each other to a higher standard. The brand calls out bullying, sexual harassment and toxic masculinity. The response to the ad was immediate and polarizing, attracting a ton of social media attention.
According to social media analytics firm Talkwalker, mentions of Gillette from January 14-16 were over 1.5 million (blogs, forums, news sites, social media), compared to less than 10,000 for the same period the week prior. And the buzz only picked up speed.
The hashtag #TheBestMenCanBe was used 187,400 times over that same period. On Twitter, the brand's original tweet has been shared more than 238,064 times. The Gillette ad itself has already been seen more than 3 million times on YouTube.
But will all this attention help or hurt the brand?
A quick Google search brings up a list of media responses, with articles titled, “What that Gillette ad says about the trend in woke advertising” (Cnn.com), “Gillette Ad Will Backfire, 'Marketing Week' Columnist Believes” (MediaPost.com), “3 Reasons the New Gillette Commercial Is an Absolute Winner” (inc.com) and “Blowback over ‘we believe’ ad suggests Gillette is no Nike” (AdAge.com). Research and history tell us that truly understanding the impact and consumer response to an ad is more difficult than simply listening to those first to react.
To see how consumers feel about the ad market research firm System1 tested the ad and compared respondent ratings to half a dozen 2018 Gillette ads. These were rated on the firm’s star rating scale from 1-5 to predict the potential for brand growth driven by an ad, assuming it’s invested in it. According to System1, most of the Gillette ads received two stars. The “We believe” ad received four stars, with 72 percent of respondents feeling positive emotions – happiness or surprise – after seeing the ad (17 percent were neutral; 11 percent gave a negative response).
“The ad triggered its more sensitive critics by using the language of feminist discourse, like ‘toxic masculinity.’ The actual things it’s highlighting – raising boys to be their best by not cat-calling women, brawling and bullying each other – are entirely uncontroversial. Hence the positive response,” says System1’s Tom Ewing in a post for Little Black Book online.
On the other end of the spectrum, in an article for Forbes, Charles Tayler, John A. Murphy professor of marketing at the Villanova University of Business and senior research fellow at the Center for Marketing and Consumer Insights, shares that he feels it is a toxic campaign. “Part of the Gillette’s motive for running the ad may be that there is recent research suggesting that Millennials give more credit to brands using corporate social responsibility appeals (Hoffman 2014 and Nielsen 2017),” Tayler writes. “While there appears to be something to this generalization about Millennials and CSR appeals, much more needs to be learned about the nuances of what works and what does not. In this case, it appears Gillette will learn a lesson about what not to do as pertains to corporate responsibility efforts.”
Regardless of how you look at it, Gillette’s ad speaks to the trend of brands leaning into corporate social responsibility and only time will tell if this campaign helps or hurts the brand. And the campaign certainly acts as a reminder that brands should arm themselves with quality market research – including researching key stakeholders – before turning to brand activism. As highlighted in a Quirk’s e-newsletter article published in 2018, “Brand activism and the changing path to profit,” companies shouldn’t “rush out and adopt a cause for instant social justice cred” but instead “do some soul-searching and determine whether brand activism is the right path for them or not.”