Gillette’s toxic ad

Once again the UK seems to be a divided nation. This time it’s not Brexit or Remain, north versus south or whether Jaffa cakes are actually cakes or biscuits. The cause of the discord is an online advert for a men’s razor that’s split people into two camps. Either you applaud its clunky messaging about male bad behaviour, or you don’t.

In the middle of January, Gillette posted a one minute and 48 second video online that aligns itself with the #metoo movement. It takes the company’s 30year-old slogan, “The Best a Man Can Get,” and turns it into a reflection on toxic masculinity, encouraging men to 'be the best they can be'.

If you haven’t seen the advertising campaign don’t bother, which gives you an indication of which side of the divide I stand.

It is a truly nauseating commercial that pretty much tars all men with the same brush. Gillette has decided that what today’s men really need is not a clean shave but a kicking and a patronising dressing down.

The short film features scenes of boys fighting and being bullied and has depictions of sexism in the media and in the boardroom with the narrator saying, "it’s been going on far too long”.

All the while a backdrop of news clips reports on the #metoo movement. The message comes through loud and clear: all men are bad and must change if we want to end domestic violence, sexual harassment and bullying.

The ad plays on the supposition that us blokes want to change for the better but don’t know how to.

Well, many of us don’t need to because we’ve quite easily made it through life without harassing, patronising or denigrating women. The notion that we’re violent, seek to dominate women and don’t cry because it’s seen to be a bit ‘girly’ is deeply offensive.

Gillette’s commercial also ignores some inconvenient truths. Bullying has nothing to do with being male; girls and women can also be spiteful and venomous bullies.

Domestic abuse is also meted out to men who make up a third of all cases in the UK. The ManKind Initiative, a charity for domestic abuse states that one in six men will experience domestic abuse at some point in their lives.

According to a BBC report at the end of last summer Police in England and Wales recorded 149,248 instances of domestic violence involving a male victim in 2017. That was more than double the number reported in 2012. Yet despite an increase in reported attacks there is insufficient support for male victims.

But it seems facts like these drift into the background, because at least with regards to the mainstream media and Gillette’s marketing gurus men are fair game these days.

The ad is a failure because it will not change a thing. If you are the kind of idiot who abuses and harasses women you’re not going to have a Damascene conversion because you watched a short video on YouTube.

So why did Gillette create it? Well, it saw an opportunity to make some money by tagging itself to a social issue.

By associating with #metoo the brand deserves condemnation, not congratulations. Obviously the movement has a message that everyone can get behind, that of renouncing sexual assault and discrimination and empowering women. But like the Gillette ad it too is a flawed crusade because it has become a peg on which women can hang any complaint about men.

Yes, it has resulted in some very bad apples getting their comeuppance in the courtroom, but not all men who have had the finger pointed at them have been so ghastly. It is hashtag politics which just encourages the unthinking mob such as some Hollywood actresses who all of a sudden are calling out male behaviour yet were happy to work with Roman Polanski, a convicted rapist who is still a fugitive from US justice.

Gillette’s ad should be accompanied with a boilerplate statement in subtitles or presented as a voiceover, like the terms and conditions warnings you hear at the end of many radio ads. I’m thinking something like: “This advert is not meant to tarnish all men but hey we're jumping onto a bandwagon here and aligning ourselves to a cause in the hope that we can sell more products and boost our bottom line.”

I hope it does the brand real harm. Laughingly, amid all the sanctimonious badgering, there isn’t a single razor in the commercial. That’s just like my bathroom cabinet these days because I won’t be buying the company’s shaving products ever again. Unless it makes an apology.