A Gillecture On Selling With Controversy
In a study done in 2010 by Chinese researchers at Beihang University in Beijing, looking through over 200,000 users on Chinese social media Weibo revealed that anger elicits more emotions from users than feelings of joy or sadness.
So is it any wonder that Gillette’s new ad campaign has been so discussed?
At almost 30 million views, and 1.4 million dislikes at the time of writing, Gillette’s newest ad campaign has garnered an immense amount of attention in a very short amount of time. A cursory look at the YouTube comments reveal folks saying that they are “never buying from Gilette again”, that Gillette has the honour of being the first company they will ever boycott, and that it’s a product “we should forget.”
The message of the video is a positive one. Simply: don’t be a jerk. However, it is admittedly very poorly shown and executed, often projecting the message in a condescending tone. At points it is absurd to the point of being laughably bad (such as when a line of men, each with their own private BBQ grill, laugh while two boys are beating each other up).
Despite the scathing criticism, many have stood firmly with Gillette. According to Fast Company, “63% of the 645,000 tweets about @Gillette have been positive, and 94% of the 246,000 tweets hashtagged #TheBestMenCanBe have been positive.” The very vocal negative minority, as always, overshadows the positive audience.
In the recent past, I can think of Nike’s American campaign with Colin Kaepernick being a resounding success. Allying themselves with a controversial american football player was a gamble that payed off, with Nike seeing their shares soar by 36% in the first half of 2018. Conversely, I can think of the infamous Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad as an example that did not work out well. Pepsi has yet to recover their image with millennials a year later. Both companies used controversial topics to help sell their products, yet it is a card that should be played carefully.
And for Gillette, this was not an accident, but a carefully crafted move to create a buzz and get people talking about them. There is no such thing as bad publicity, and this controversy has seen the brand being catapulted into headlines and discussed internationally. Not for it’s products, but on the message. It has alienated many people, but also created a much fiercer group of loyal consumers moved by Gillette’s stance.
But there in also lies a problem. I cannot believe, for one second, that P.&G. shareholders care one bit about the #MeToo movement. I cannot, at all, believe that Gillette created this ad in good faith. In my opinion, the ad was proof of a very shallow understanding of the #MeToo movement, and of companies having no shame in using important topics of discussion to their own profit.
It still is a bit too early to say if P.&G. will benefit from the movement or not overall, but it can be said that they succeeded in what they carried out to do. For the #MeToo movement though? Well, let’s just say Gillette didn’t add anything of value.
