I already had a post lined up for today, but the latest attempt by a big company to “get woke” backfired so spectacularly and so brilliantly that I simply had to jump onto that particular bandwagon.
Take a look at the new Gillette “We Believe” advert. Trust me, it’s a doozy:
Once you’ve stopped alternately rolling your eyes and laughing your ass off at how stupid this is, we can continue. Don’t worry, I’m patient, I know it will take a while.
So. The chap behind this train-wreck of a marketing campaign is apparently a Fake American – if he is even American at this point – named Pankaj Bhalla, and he is the Director for Gillette and Venus in North America.
Yeah. That’s just what American customers need: a lecture on toxic masculinity from an Indian guy who looks like a complete vegetarian soyboy and has absolutely nothing in common with American heritage.
Jesus wept.
Now, I write all of this as an actual, really-for-real shareholder of Procter & Gamble. I even applied for jobs with them. (Didn’t get in, for the record.) I bought shares in P&G back in… um… er… hang on a moment… Actually, I have no idea, I just remember that it was back when A. G. Lafley was still CEO of the company.
Actually, I think I bought stock in P&G a few years after they acquired Gillette, for like $57 BILLION in cash. (Remember back in the days when that really was a jaw-dropping amount of cash to spend on a business? That was ever so long ago.) This was back in the days before social justice stupidity had really begun to fester like the cancer that it is within the heart of America’s corporations, and businesses still made really sensible decisions about brands and marketing that gave customers what they wanted, when they wanted it.
So I am writing this as someone with a very real, very personal, stake in the company that I am criticising – unlike much of the rest of the ‘Sphere.
Now, the thing is that Proctoid advertising was once focused on product attributes. They did a really great job of appealing to people on a very dialectical basis – by describing clearly and simply what made their products special when compared to the competition. The P&G way was to segment the market very carefully, which they did (and still do) better than almost anyone.
If you doubt this, go take a look at the laundry detergent section of your local supermarket sometime. You will see very clearly that the top 5 brands or so go something like this: Tide, Ariel, Persil, Arm & Hammer, and Cheer (or Gain).
Guess what: three out of those five brands are P&G-owned. And they are distinguished largely based on price and marketing – and little else.
The P&G way used to be data-driven, customer-oriented, and exceptionally hard-headed. They rarely tried to treat their customers like idiots – and the few times that they did, they really suffered for it. They understood what their customers wanted, did not pander to anyone, and generally did a great job of building a stable, cash flow-rich, wealth-generating portfolio of brands and assets.
Nowadays, however, it would appear that they have a lot less interest in being sensible, and a lot more interest in being “woke”.
And, inevitably, they are going to go broke whenever they do that.
If you look at the like/dislike ratio on that video, it’s currently running at 1:5 – and it was at 1:10 earlier today, which indicates that (((someone))) over at YouTube is likely doing some jiggery-pokery with the negative comments and downvotes.
It’s been less than 48 hours since that idiotic video was released, and we are already seeing that Harry’s and Dollar Shave Club – and almost certainly Schick too, which is held by Gillette’s great rival Edgewell Personal Care, which used to be part of Energizer Holdings until it was split off – are getting a big influx of new customers.
If P&G had any sense whatsoever, they would immediately demote or outright fire this Fake American Pankaj Bhalla character for terminal stupidity, issue a swift apology to the existing user base, and nix that advert as fast as possible – and go back to using icons of masculine achievement to show everyone that their products are, in fact, the best a man can get.
Now, the thing is, I stopped using Gillette shaving products years ago. These days, I use good old-fashioned wet-shaves with olive oil, shaving soap on a badger-hair brush, and a safety razor. So I couldn’t care less what Gillette does with its lineup of shaving goods. They have absolutely no interest for me – and their safety razor blades simply cannot compare with the much better quality ones made by Merkur, for instance.
I do care when a company that I happen to own shares in, does something as monumentally STUPID as destroying its own brand value, especially when it’s done in the name of “social justice”.
The absolute worst part of the ad, as several other commentators have pointed out, is the blatantly anti-white sentiment involved. Once you see it, you cannot get past the fact that every single act of supposedly “toxic” masculinity in the ad is “perpetrated” by a white boy or man – and that every time someone steps in to stop such horrors from taking place, he just so happens to be black.
Men don’t buy shaving products to get a lecture on diversity and how not to be an asshole. Men buy shaving products to groom ourselves and look good.
Gillette, and its parent P&G, deserves every last one of the brickbats that it has received over the last two days, and especially in the last several hours. It should be amusing to watch them try to double down – because that is very likely what they will do – and ignore this spectacular failure of their own making.
1 Comment
It's poison.
Glanced at an ARS article tat came up on my feed re: the APA guidelines, and the "but the guidelines are only just" jsutifications are anuseating, as well as teh condescending "conservatives hate science" or "people complaining about the article didn't bother to read the article/guidelines"
The guidelines are even worse SJW word salad than the APA article. And I think the people at ARS – especially the author about the APA article – aren't understanding that the APA magazine writer knows exactly what he is talking about and isn't a conservative vilifying the APA guidelines, as they keep defending the posting not being about attacking positive manly virtues.