Gillette sparks emotions with it's ad campaign "We Believe: The Best Man Can Be"

1. Gillette’s Brand
Positioning
MKM915 MMS- Digital Marketing
To Professor Bhupesh Shah
June 9, 2019
By Gurleen Kaur Bhatia
1

2. Gillette
A brand of men’s and women’s safety razors and other personal care products including shaving supplies, owned by
multi-national corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G).
2

3. Gillette’s social media strategy
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4. Competitive Advantage in the
marketing strategy of Gillette
• Strong product line: Gillette has strong presence with a large
number of offerings and extended product line which is
supplementing each other in the long run resulting greater
customer loyalty and brand recall.
• Market Presence: The parent company of Gillette, P & G
sells its product in more than 180 countries through its fully
owned business units or joint ventures. With the extensive
presence of brand portfolio, Gillette is able to minimize its
operational cost and optimize its distribution cost through the
use of existing network of P & G.
4https://www.marketing91.com/marketing-strategy-of-gillette/

5. • Gillette aired a new campaign “The best men can be” in January
2019.
• The centerpiece of the ad campaign is a “short film” of less
than two minutes that replaces Gillette’s 30-years old slogan,
“the best a man can get”, with “the best man can be” while
portraying instances of bullying, aggressive behavior, sexism
and sexual harassment.
• The purpose of this campaign was to stop the stigmas and
stereotypes that men and boys have been subject to for
decades.
• To achieve the goal of helping men achieving their personal best,
Gillette decided to donate $1 Million per year for the next
three-years to non-profit organizations
Gillette new ad campaign, “the best man can be”
Gillette unfold a marketing strategy
that controvert its own previous
branding
5
https://gillette.com/en-us/the-best-men-can-be
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/water-cooler/new-gillette-advertisement-takes-on-toxic-
masculinity-to-promote-the-best-men-can-be

6. Target Audience
The Gillette product targets men who attach importance to the
personal grooming between the age group of 20-45 years.
Brand targets men who are conscious about their sensitive skins and
prefer maintaining the standards of their appearance and their
smooth skin.
Message
This new campaign “The Best A Man Can Be” in response to
#MeToo movement that encourages men to be better version of
themselves.
6http://www.walkingchristian.com/2019/01/16/whats-wrong-with-gillettes-ad-on-toxic-masculinity/

7. Did Gillette’s ‘The Best Men Can Be’ campaign succeed?
• Social media monitoring company, Brandwatch says, the ad has driven up social media conversation around Gillette by 11,722%, reaching 1.4 million
online mentions over the second week of January this year (as of 2.55pm EST on January 15, 2019)
• Hashtags in relations to this ad, both positive and negative, have been tweeted and retweeted widely, generating hundreds of millions of impressions on
Twitter. The official hashtag, “#thebestmencanbe”, had been tweeted over 5,000 times, and retweeted over 180,000 times when Brandwatch collected
data. Meanwhile, ‘#boycottgillette’ (plus the misspelled ‘#boycottgillette’) had been tweeted over 2,800 times, and been retweeted over 12,000 times.
Twitter Performance
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https://videoadnews.com/2019/01/17/did-gillettes-the-best-men-can-be-campaign-succeed-heres-what-the-data-said/
https://www.brandwatch.com/p/crimson-hexagon/

8. Sentiments towards Gillette generated by its new campaign
If we analyse the sentiment of consumers
towards Gillette’s campaign, Brandwatch found
the ad gained more negative reactions as the
week progressed from the day it released.
On January 10, 2019, before the ad released,
over 85% of Gillette’s online mentions were
positive. On January 14, 2019, the day ad was
released, positive sentiments reduced to 62.2%
. By January 16, 2019, the negative sentiments
were 54.8%.
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https://videoadnews.com/2019/01/17/did-gillettes-the-best-men-can-be-campaign-succeed-heres-what-the-data-said/

9. Gillette new campaign had the biggest impact on women
According to the marketing research by Crimson Hexagon
which is part of Brandwatch, women who were engaged
into the conversation about this new ad campaign by
Gillette, 51% of the women expressed joy, which is a
significant departure from women’s sentiments above
shaving in general. While 28% of women found it to be
disgusting and it was targeted at toxic masculinity and not
about the ad itself. Women’s response to the ad was
positive, and some of the most retweeted posts were made
by women.
9
https://www.brandwatch.com/p/crimson-hexagon/
https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/the-data-behind-gillettes-ad-shows-it-had-the-biggest-impact-with-women/

10. Gillette’s social media insights after the “The Best Man Can be”
campaign
• According to Toluna insights survey of 506 respondents emailed
to Marketing Dive, 79.6% said they liked the ad and 51.4%
believed it had the ability to bring change to the industry. While
76.9% felt hopeful about the future after viewing the ad, only
about 34% said it made them want to purchase Gillette
products.
• Nearly 60% of respondents said they believed that they would
remember the ad in next 3 or 4 months.
• Gillette’s campaign additionally over-indexed in targeting across
social platforms for the 19-24 age demo at 34% compared to
11% for the brand’s general targeting aimed at the age group,
per data from BrandTotal provided to Marketing Dive.
BrandTotal revealed that targeted consumers for the ad
campaign were 51% females and 49% male. The firm found
that 63% of consumers sentiment about the ad on social media
was negative, 29% was neutral and just 8% was positive.
35%
23%
15%
27%
Dive Insights
Liked the ad campaign
Believe ad campaign will
bring change
Purchase the Gillette
products
Believe the would
remember the ad in next 3
or 4 months
10
https://uk.toluna.com/About
https://www.marketingdive.com/
https://www.brandtotal.com/
https://www.marketingdive.com/news/gillettes-metoo-inspired-ad-sparked-social-media-outcry-heres-what-the/546228/

11. What Gillette has to say…
Gillette’s brand director for North America, Pankaj Bhalla told the
Wall Street Journal: “This is an important conversation happening,
and as a company that encourages men to be their best, we feel
compelled to both address it and take action of our own. We are
taking a realistic look at what’s happening today, and aiming to
inspire change by acknowledging that the old saying ‘Boys Will Be
Boys’ is not an excuse.”
The negative reaction did not make P&G pull the spot. A
spokesperson for the brand mentioned CNBC that it’s a matter of
responsibility: “We expected debate- discussion is necessary. For
every negative reaction we’ve seen many positive reactions, people
calling that effort courageous, timely, smart, and much-needed. At
the end of the day, sparking conversation is what matters. This gets
people to pay attention to the topic and encourages them to consider
taking action to make a difference.”
As part of the ad campaign, Gillette also declared that it would make
donation of $1 million per year for the next three years to US non-
profit organisations which deals with helping men become role
models for the next generation by inspiring respect and
accountability.
Pankaj Bhalla, Gillette’s brand director for North America
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https://twitter.com/bhalla_p
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/27/most-hacks-take-minutes-to-do--and-weeks-to-discover.html
https://www.fastcompany.com/90293402/gillette-responds-to-the-backlash-against-its-woke-viral-ad

12. Point of View
Gillette aired a new campaign “The Best A Man Can Be” in response to #MeToo movement that encourages men to be better version of themselves.
By displaying toxic masculinity and asking one question to the viewers, “Is this best a man can get?”, ad addresses the social issue like sexual
harassment, bullies and bad behavior. The campaign received mixed reactions and predictably extreme from both Gillette users and non users. Some
praised the progressive decision the brand made, while others decided to boycott the razor company. "The Best A Man Can Be" campaign seems to
be an evolutionary change in the brand. The vision of the brand has broaden up with the changing scenarios in the society. The campaign brought a
debate and a necessary discussion in order to bring a real change in the mindset of the people.
In my opinion, I liked this campaign. It’s a piece of advertisement which clearly argues that the culture of masculinity needs to be changed and it places
the responsibility to do so on men. Gillette contradicted its own previous ad “The Best A Man Can Get” and the ad referred the trends of
advertisements that relied on objectifying women, which is a strong move. The new ad campaign “The Best A Man Can Be” first shows the aggressive
men behaviour, then it asks “Is this the best a man can get?” and then it shows examples of positive behaviour- men steps into preventing these
behaviours when they happen in public. I believe the ad portrays the vision of what a better model of masculinity might look like. It talks about culture
that made men this way. It references explicitly the “boys will be boys”, as the matter of fact that boys are inherently aggressive and that they should
know how to behave and choose their actions wisely.
In my opinion, the brand wanted to deliver a concept of what and how men make decisions in his daily lives, but not how “good” or “bad” masculinity is.
They would not be considered good simply by not harassing women or bullying or any negative attitude, they would be simply good when they’re
accepting responsibilities of humans in a society to be active protector of empathy and morality. For me, I didn’t see it as it is pointing out all the men in
society, but it is particularly focusing on men who have engaged in sexual assault, harassment, violence and discrimination.
From a marketing perspective, Brands would always receive criticism if they are raising a social issue and many brands need to be carefully when they
are talking about social issues, as it’s the sensitive topic to talk about and there are different people who will always have different opinions about any
saying. But research has shown that majority of consumers want brands to take a stand on social and political issues, as it influences people and
different age groups like millennials and Gen Z.
With Gillette, the only thing that surprised me was that why it took long to realise they need to change the trend?
The good thing about the ad campaign is its visibility. By highlighting situations in which men are causing harm, on the one side, and behaving
respectfully, on other, shouldn’t be the matter of being upset for men who are due to the campaign. Gillette is spotting on different types of “masculine”
behaviour and bringing discussion. Secondly, the ad is call-for action. It gives a picture of where are we going and where we have to go. Third, the
end of the short-film focuses on the legacy of our current behaviour. Gillette highlights crucial point: role modelling. For men, they have an opportunity
to reshape what it means to be a man and to stand as an example for our next generation how to be respectful human and be nice to everyone
around.
In my opinion, the brand will lose few consumers with this ad or people will threaten the brand, but the world is evolving. The picture of ideal
masculinity is changing. We don’t know what this ad will actually result into in future, but from Gillette’s side, it was good discussion to raise.12