Gillette has been in the news lately…
…with a storm of controversy over its latest ad campaign.
The company has this to say…
“Thirty years ago, we launched our The Best A Man Can Get tagline.
Since then, it has been an aspirational statement, reflecting standards that many men strive to achieve.
But turn on the news today and it’s easy to believe that men are not at their best. Many find themselves at a crossroads, caught between the past and a new era of masculinity. While it is clear that changes are needed, where and how we can start to effect that change is less obvious for many. And when the changes needed seem so monumental, it can feel daunting to begin. So, let’s do it together.
It’s time we acknowledge that brands, like ours, play a role in influencing culture. And as a company that encourages men to be their best, we have a responsibility to make sure we are promoting positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man. With that in mind, we have spent the last few months taking a hard look at our past and coming communication and reflecting on the types of men and behaviors we want to celebrate. We’re inviting all men along this journey with us – to strive to be better, to make us better, and to help each other be better.
From today on, we pledge to actively challenge the stereotypes and expectations of what it means to be a man everywhere you see Gillette. In the ads we run, the images we publish to social media, the words we choose, and so much more.
As part of The Best Men Can Be campaign, Gillette is committing to donate $1 million per year for the next three years to non-profit organizations executing programs in the United States designed to inspire, educate and help men of all ages achieve their personal “best” and become role models for the next generation.
Our tagline needs to continue to inspire us all to be better every day, and to help create a new standard for boys to admire and for men to achieve… Because the boys of today are the men of tomorrow.
We’ve all got work to do. And it starts today.
Gillette. The Best A Man Can Get.”
I think it’s fair to say that the ad has certainly attracted attention and caused some strong reaction with the extremes along the lines of…
(1) Colossal marketing blunder that insults and alienates the company’s customers. Sign of a company that has lost its way and allowed its advertising to be taken over by political activists.
…to…
(2) Brave stand by a major company with an important message that’s in line with major social trends and that in fact will boost sales because customers (or potential customers) agree with the ideas presented by Gillette.
So what will be the effect of the ad and are there any useful points for practitioners of direct response marketing? As regards what effect the ad will have, here’s the thing…
From the outside, we’ve got no way of knowing or of making an informed assessment. We don’t know what Gillette’s objective is, what data they are working with or how they have gone about making the decision.
Gillette themselves will only have a vague idea…even when they have future sales figures…because there’s no way to track results.
For practitioners of direct response marketing…it’s all about results!
For direct marketers, the purpose of an ad is to produce results (usually sales or leads) that can be tracked and measured. That’s not the case with this Gillette ad.
So, this ad and campaign from Gillette is really just another example of why people like Dan Kennedy caution against paying too much attention to what big companies do in their marketing and advertising. From the preface to No B.S. Direct Marketing: The Ultimate No Holds Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Direct Marketing for Non-Direct Marketing Businesses …
“We can begin with the radical, challenging idea that just about everything you see big business doing is wrong for you – if you run a small business, a private practice, a service enterprise, or even a midsize, growth company. Big companies have different objectives, agendas, constituencies to satisfy, CEO egos to salve as well as different resources and depth of resources than you do. If you study them at all, you must time-travel to examine what they did in journey from start to small and ultimately to big, not what they do now.”
So perhaps the real lesson from this episode is not to get distracted by any buzz or controversy over what large companies and big brand names might be up to. Instead stick to the fundamentals of direct response marketing and build your business with tested methods where you can track and measure your results.
A good resource to get started, or revisit the fundamentals, is another book from Dan Kennedy, the recently published Magnetic Marketing: How to Attract a Flood of New Customers That Pay, Stay, and Refer.
And for a primer on the original direct response marketing text, “Scientific Advertising” by Claude Hopkins, take a look at my book Scientific Advertising In The 21st Century: An Introduction To Timeless Principles For Success In Advertising And Marketing .