Perhaps Gillette’s ad is cutting edge rather than contentious
Its a mystery why men who shave (and possibly women who do, too) would find an ad about men being their best selves ‘inappropriate’
Why are the global marketing press so upset about the much-talked-about Gillette ad? I have no idea if the man (who shaves) in the street is upset about the ad (by that I don’t mean men who shave while in the actual street, because that would be weird. I mean consumers). One would have to look at quantitative research to have an opinion on that. These consumers may or may not be upset, I’m not sure. But what I am 100% sure about is that the global marketing press and marketing commentators are very upset about it indeed. “Grostesque”, “cynical”, “inappropriate” — these are just a few of the words used to describe this piece of work. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this kind of reaction from the chattering classes of our industry. Why? These same groups couldn’t get enough of Nike’s Colin Kaepernick’s work. So why the ferocious backlash against a piece of work that sends a message we all agree with? Er … we do all agree with this message, don’t we? After all, it is a fairly str...
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