Corporate Marketing: Gillette’s Ad on Toxic Masculinity

Corporate Marketing: Gillette’s Ad on Toxic Masculinity

Introduction

There is little doubt that any company which treats corporate marketing as an afterthought, is preparing for imminent demise. Companies have long since learned that it is imperative to cultivate flourishing relationships with their clients, and other stakeholders, to maintain and expand revenue growth. Corporate marketing is a philosophy that describes a company’s strategy that includes how it packages and presents itself to its clients and stakeholders and how that affects its entire marketing approach (Löschenbrand, 2016). Over the years, the evolution of corporate marketing has demonstrated that ignoring any of these elements can spell trouble for a company’s strategic planning process in the competitive current business environment. This paper discusses the tenets of corporate marketing, through the critical analysis of a 2019 Gillette ad on toxic masculinity that resulted in public debate and controversy and, thus, evaluates the reasons behind said ad as well as the company’s overall marketing strategy. We’ll examine diverse viewpoints from media on both sides of the divide as well as the AC4ID test of corporate marketing will be applied.

Gillette is part of the Proctor and Gamble, an international consumer products conglomerate, grooming arm which provides 10% of P&G’s $66.8 billion annual revenues (Meyersohn, 2019). On January 13th, 2019, Gillette ran an ad on the YouTube online platform titled, “We Believe: The Best Men Can Be,” which quickly garnered widespread interest with over a million views in 48 hours (Gillette, 2019). It begins with men of different races staring at themselves in the mirror with background voices echoing the, now famous, #MeToo movement’s campaign against sexual harassment and sexual assault. The phrase, “Is this the best a man can get?” then accentuates this initial presentation before scenes of bullying, street calling, and sexual harassment appear (Gillette, 2019). It also depicts a business leader in a meeting blatantly shutting down a woman, multiple media reporting on sexual assault cases, and men folding their hands as all these harassments and bullying take place.

The narrator then states that toxic masculinity’s been going on for too long and challenges men to stop making excuses and join the few who have already decided to end it. Men protecting boys from bullying, calling out other men on negative behaviours and standing up for women appear towards the end of the ad as an example of the kind of men society needs.  Predictably, the advert triggered a flurry of responses in the comment section, on mass and social media platforms and the general public; consequently, dividing the audience into two factions. While different opinions exist as to why Gillette decided to run this ad and take a political stance on a thorny issue, we shall confine our analysis on the corporate marketing aspect of it.

Gillette’s ad sought to bring about a debate on toxic masculinity as part of the company’s contribution to the ongoing advocacy to end negative masculine behaviors in society. Toxic masculinity has its roots in the 1980s and, recently, became popularised after the Metoo Movement gained traction. The Metoo Movement’s website describes the organisation, named after the movement, as one created to assist sexual violence survivors in achieving healing and in building a system of survivor advocates meant to find solutions and interrupt the vice at the community level (metoo, 2006). This movement thrust to the national and global dialogue after a viral Twitter hashtag conversation titled £Metoo highlighting the plight of sexual violence survivors made headlines. After that, the issue of toxic masculinity came forth as a significant contributor to global sexual violence, including sexual harassment and sexual assault. According to Veissière (2018), Toxic masculinity has diverse meanings, but the most common one describes it as a cross-cultural archetype representing the type of man that one should avoid becoming. It adheres to male-manifest behaviors, including racist or homophobic bullying, misogyny, drug and alcohol addictions, and sexual assault and harassment, among others (de Boise, 2019).

Understanding the background of the Metoo Movement and what constitutes toxic masculinity is crucial in probing the motivation behind Gillette’s corporate marketing strategy. These issues have become a commonality in the national dialogue, and Gillette found it essential to make its position known through the controversial ad that aired just two weeks before the Super Bowl. In a May 24^th, 2019 interview, Carolyn Tastad, the P&G gender equality executive sponsor, revealed that Gillette intended to use the company’s vast financial resources and extensive reach to add their voice to the conversation on critical societal issues (Hassan, 2019). The company wanted to portray authenticity on its stand on political issues that affect a large segment of its consumers, as opposed to adopting silence when urgent action was necessary. Tastad also highlighted the importance of the ad’s role in showcasing the brand’s commitment to advocating for gender equality. She noted this ideal as unachievable without the support of men who hold fellow men to peak standards, aid in the elimination of bias, and demonstrate positive social behavior.

However, Gillette’s ad met with considerable opposition from media and a portion of its male consumer base with videos of men burning Gillette products surfacing online. Taylor (2019) described it as a stereotypical and one-sided representation of an entire gender. He found it presumptuous that the company masked its clear intent to boost sales, given its gradual decade-long drop in market share from 70 to 50 percent owing spiking competition, as an effort to lecture men on what constitutes masculinity. Abitbol (2019) explains this presumption as one based on a combination of lousy delivery where the company tries to aggressively force its male consumers to back the Metoo movement and a mismatch between the ad and grooming. Instead, he points out, the ad would have resonated better if it tied its message to its product, but they failed in their execution. This mismatch is what made consumers suspicious of their intention.

On the other hand, the ad generated support from segments of both the male and female populations of consumers, given that it showed the company’s willingness to take a stand on what it believes despite the risks. Perry (2019) cites various research conducted immediately after the ad went viral indicating that the number of people who supported Gillette’s message as the best thing about the advert was 66%, 84% of women as well as 77% of men had a positive reaction while only 8% disliked it. 66% indicated that they were more likely to purchase Gillette brand products after the ad. As Forziat (2019) describes it, the brand must have taken three categories of groups into account, including those who would desist purchasing the brand, ones who’d not react and continue buying its products and the new customers expected to shift to Gillette products. This perspective meant that the company was ready for any consequences that would arise from the ad as long as they expressed their beliefs on critical national issues. If they estimated getting more sales despite the backlash, then it was worth the effort.

To get a more in-depth look into the motivations behind Gillette’s ad, we can utilise the ACI4D test as a reliable corporate marketing tool. The ACI4D test is a 1990s normative corporate brand management model aimed at gaining a deeper understanding of the amalgamation of the seven corporate identities (Balmer, 2012). These identity types are a derivation of the six fundamental corporate identity facets, that is, the corporate reputation, corporate image, organisational identity, corporate communications, corporate brand and corporate identity (Peck, 2020, p. 54). The ACI4D test seven identity faucets include the conceived, communicated, actual, cultural, covenanted, ideal, and desired corporate brand identities. These are further divisible into two categories where the first five (conceived, communicated, actual, cultural, covenanted) provide a snapshot of the company’s current reality. At the same time, the last two (ideal and desired) portray the future position (Peck, 2020, p. 58). Appel‐Meulenbroek et al. (2010) describe the corporate identity, on a general level, as the combined values, aims, and ethos that define a company and sets it apart from its competition and upgrades its competitive advantage as a result.

The ACI4D test takes into account probable misalignment between the various corporate identities and the management representation of the same due to specific identity inhabitation of different time frames (Smith). The actual identity implies present organizational attributes like ownership, leadership, structure, and covered markets; the conceived identity is the company’s perception from the external environs while communicated identity is the controlled communication represented by PR, advertising, and uncontrolled communication like word of mouth. Cultural identity represents employee beliefs and feelings, the desired identity is representative of the leadership’s corporate vision, and the ideal identity is the optimum corporate market position based on knowledge of current knowledge of capabilities and broader competitive environment. Organizational understanding of these components enables the avoidance of external brand’s image focus while ignoring internal branding capacities’ alignment (Smith).

In the case of Gillette, the company’s leadership vision and values played a big part in the advert’s planning and roll-out, which points to their ideal and desired identities alignment. Fletcher (2019) indicates that Gary Coombe, P&G Global Grooming’s president, believes in brands spearheading societal change and, therefore, impacting positive future growth. According to Edelman Earned Brand (2018), 64% of 40,000 consumers from 8 different markets surveyed preferred that their favorite brand’s CEOs take a stand on change rather than leave it at the mercy of the government. The same report indicated that 1 in 2 buyers was belief-driven, 67% purchased a brand’s products because it represented its own beliefs on a controversial topic and that 65% of consumers would forsake one that stayed silent when their expectation was for the brand to take action. Gillette’s ad seems to lean on this combination of factors and statistics in their aim to reclaim the grooming market domination.

Gillette’s ad was based on the brand’s covenanted identity (brand promise) and sought to satisfy key stakeholder expectations. On their official website, the company indicates its resolve to commit to making men the best they can be and pledges a 3-year-long, $1million annual contribution to NGO causes aimed at meeting this goal (Gillette, 2019a). This step resonates with the cultural identity (feelings and beliefs) its employees exude through the eyes of an employee who’s worked there for 20 years, who believes the ad is the direct reflection of Gillette and P&G Group as a whole (Mautz, 2019). He states that the corporation always aims to leave people feeling something; joy, anger, reflective, etc. to achieve a real voice for the brand and its stakeholders.

The company must have considered its stakeholders, across the spectrum, and decided that the ad would resonate with the essential ones. Companies categorise stakeholders according to their involvement in corporate value production based on their power, legitimacy, and urgency attributes, as indicated in the stakeholder salience model (Ronnegard and Smith, 2018). Stakeholder power arises from the ability to execute their own will, legitimacy from action appropriateness and desirability, and urgency denoting the action’s sensitivity to time (Uribe, Ortiz-Marcos, and Uruburu, 2018). Harrison, Freeman, and Cavalcanti Sá de Abreu (2015) present the stakeholder theory as one aimed at bringing about balance, practicality, and value. The three categories of stakeholders defined by possession of either of the three attributes as latent (one quality e.g., government, CSR recipients), expectant (two characteristics e.g., creditors, activists, media), and definitive stakeholders with three attributes e.g., customers and suppliers (Baskerville‐Morley, 2004). Gillette’s ad majorly aimed at satisfying the ultimate stakeholders i.e., the customers, and more specifically, new millennial generation shavers. As Perry (2019) describes it, Gillette’s ad was the brand’s response to stiff competition. It was a customer acquisition strategy given the younger shavers association with brands that take stands on issues. The brand made a gamble on the assumption that the other stakeholder categories would support their strategy, and that played to their advantage, mostly.

Conclusively, it’s clear that Gillette’s toxic masculinity ad was a necessary strategy in changing societal and business dynamics, given the controversy and conversation it generated. While Richa Naidu (2019) reported an $8 billion quarterly loss for the brand following the ad, the company might be eyeing substantial future profits. The grooming industry is, on course, to grow to $29.14 billion in 2024 (Shahbandeh, 2019). Gillette’s ad seems, so far, to satisfy the corporate marketing considerations of alignment between external and internal brand image dynamics. It remains to be seen whether the company created a bigger market for its rivals or drastically expanded its own.