I recounted my Costco conversation (see yesterday’s post) about the Gillette ad on Facebook. A cousin in her 20s responded
As someone with a daughter you should be happy about this. The whole purpose of this ad is to show men they can be kind and loving. Which I know you want for Greta. It’s shedding the awful stigmas that have been pushed onto men.
To me the ad was absurd. The situations in which the men found themselves entailed no personal risk and no consequences for action versus inaction. One young man says “not cool” to a same-age friend who is considering pursuing an attractive young woman on the street (maybe “it might be expensive” would be more effective?). A full-sized adult male separates two young boys who are wrestling/fighting on the grass. Shoveling the front walk after the weekend’s snowstorm is more challenging than what any of the guys in the video are doing.
What kind of conduct was valorized when I was this cousin’s age? Roger Olian and Lenny Skutnik were warm and dry prior to deciding to dive into the icy Potomac River to save people from Air Florida 90. They took a huge risk that was in no way related to their jobs or responsibilities. Nobody would have criticized Olian from staying in his warm truck or Skutnik for staying in his warm coat and boots on the shore. That’s not “the best a man can be” anymore, though!
The Thai cave rescue presented a similar situation in 2018. The “over 100 divers” (were they all men?) who went in would not have been criticized for staying home, right? Saman Kunan, a former Thai Navy SEAL who died, was “working in security at the Suvarnabhumi Airport when he volunteered to assist the cave rescue.” Surely at least one of those 100+ divers identifies as a man and is (or “identifies as”?) a Gillette customer. Yet to resonate with young consumers, Gillette decided that men dealing with children on grass was more powerful than men leaving their cozy homes, flying to Thailand, and pulling children out of miles of flooded cave.
I wonder if the debate about the Gillette ad is actually a debate between generations. My young cousin had a completely different impression than I did. So Gillette wasn’t clueless. They just don’t care about older customers who are stuck with a 1970s/1980s concept of achievement.
Related:
- Dorco Pace 7, the Korean-made shaving system for the non-woke and/or elderly
Funny how Lady Gillette isn’t running campaign denigrating women for catty or snarky behavior, or worse — outright lying as seen in UVA fraternity accuser in Rolling Stone piece.
It would be difficult for the Gillette Company to use the divers of the Thai cave rescue as examples of heroism and for its advertising if it is not known what kind of blades those divers use to shave(Has any of those divers come out and publicly identified what kind of blade he used for shaving?).
As for Roger Olian and Lenny Skutnik jumping into the water to save passengers from Air Florida 90, improvements in flight training and procedures have made flying statistically much safer today than it was in the 70’s and 80’s. Because flight crashes happen less often now, opportunities(and the need) for heroism decline correspondingly. Is it possible that because such opportunities are on the decline, the standards of heroism have to be reduced as well?
In previous decades Gillette TV commercials and other advertising directed at men often depicted professional athletes playing sport, not rescuing endangered individuals. The video available at the link below is around 30 years old and shows men playing sports among other activities, including working on Wall Street. The slogan, “the best a man can get” was employed. Yet I highly doubt that you raised any objections to anyone at all at the time. So your whole argument make no sense.
Vince: Certainly I never expressed an opinion about a Gillette TV ad previously because I can’t remember ever seeing a Gillette TV ad. I haven’t been a regular TV watcher since the 1970s (we had a black and white CRT!).
Even if they previously showed men doing lame stuff, I don’t think that is relevant to this latest commercial. The latest commercial is an express attempt to establish substantially higher standards for men.
I though that your point was the opposite, that the commercial was not challenging men to do anything significant.
You explicitly posed the question, in the context of this commercial, “What kind of conduct was valorized when I was this cousin’s age?” The point is that heroic activities of the sort that you referred to were not, in fact, valorized in razor blade advertising at any time in the pastr. Nothing has changed. Maybe you haven’t watched TV in decades, but most of the millions of cranky old guys who’ve gotten themselves all agitated about this commercial and very, very few of them would object to the use of athletes as “the best a man can get.”
I had a chance to watch that 1980s commercial. It seems to feature athletes competing in the Olympics and in professional sports. So if you think that it is as challenging to separate 5-year-olds as to make it to the Olympics then the standards are the same!
(And if you do figure out a foolproof way to separate 5-year-olds, please let us know!)
Oh lord you people, let me Fedsplain it to you (I assume you are both males, and I do not care how you self identify).
There has always been a tension between the celebration of people taking great risks in extremely rare circumstances for either personal glory or the benefits of others, versus the feeling that the folks that need celebrating are ordinary people doing either ordinary stuff well, or show some marginally higher level of civil duty. This tension comes about because normal lives are pedestrian, and are much more improved by people just getting stuff done, or just fixing minor but common and annoying issues, that the exceedingly rare need to have someone perform extraordinary acts of self abnegation.
The description of the commercial seems to fall in the ‘ordinary heroes’ trope — possibly because people doing extremely hazardous yet meritorious service might not pay any attention to shaving (a pedestrian act in its own right). This explains the whole damn thing to both Phil and Vince, who are being obtuse on purpose to score a point.
What surprises me is not that the execrables (or however the non woke are meant to be referred to — I lost touch with US insults) feel offended that a razorblades commercial tries to tell then how to behave, it is that the woke are not offended that their social movement is cynically exploited for commercial reasons. Any social movement that can be coopted for commercial purposes becomes ridiculous and dies (does the word ‘hipster’ mean anything to you?).
My father is the most loving person I’ve ever known and he grew up in the early ’50s to mid ’60s. He has sacrificed more for his wife, family and children than I can measure. To say that he *just* loves his wife and family is the most profound understatement I can think of. Nobody needed to teach him those feelings, or “show” him a lesson. Men don’t need to be “shown” anything. This stuff is all marketing hype for identity politics people who have no idea of what they’re talking about and are doing much, much more harm than good. This is how they pay the bills.
Preach it Brother!
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Everything about this ad was cynically discussed over and between Gillette, Proctor and Gamble and their marketing team. Who the ad was targeted to (young men AND young women (see gillette venus)) and how to leverage the anticipated outrage into even more press coverage, brand awareness, and market penetration.
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> I wonder if the debate about the Gillette ad is actually a debate between generations. My young cousin had a completely different impression than I did. So Gillette wasn’t clueless. They just don’t care about older customers who are stuck with a 1970s/1980s concept of achievement.
Philip, I bet you don’t drive a Buick. Why? Because for us, Buick was our dad’s or grandfather’s car. And I bet Gillette thinks it has the same problem. So is Harry and Dorco’s woke? No! But Gillette and NIKE are woke!
Keeping in mind I do not expose myself to commercials and I have thus not seen the one in question, I fail to see how this is nothing but a commercial? I presume ad companies want to mirror current society to be relevant to consumers, but I assume the moralising tones are nothing but a ploy to sell stuff?
It is like complaining that an ad for a low “whatever” cookie suggests it will help the consumer avoid the moral and physical trap of the diseases associated with the “whatever”. Of course such ad would be mildly or strongly moralising, and it might, or not work, but would it be worth all this bother?
Going back to Gillette, wouldn’t a simpler riposte just be ‘I do not need to be told how to behave by a razorblades sale rep’ — irrespective of however we define virtuous behaviour?
What’s really terrible about the ad. is that Procter & Gamble thinks it can make a dent in people’s common decency after it has basically been blown to hell and gone, literally dismantled piece by piece – by using a TV ad. They’re too late with far too little.
Camile Paglia does a good job defending masculinity in her discussion with Jordan Peterson, available on YouTube, though i doubt that most people think it is a concept that needs defending.
Gillette marketing team having a celebration party, high fives all around, bonuses… haven’t had this much buzz in years. Job well done!
Linepilot has it right, if the marketing theory that any publicity, even bad publicity, is good for sales.