As marketers, we always hope to garner as much attention to our campaigns as possible.
But is being viral really that important? to risk losing group of customers, to please another? Lets talk Gillette.
Backstory: Gillette changed ONE word in their 30 year old slogan with an Ad earlier this year.
2 Million views on Youtube in 2 days! Sounds like an amazing reach? Well yeah, but most for the wrong reasons.
A short film, called Believe, plays on their famous slogan “The best a man can get”, replacing it with “The best men can be”. If you haven’t seen it, i did you a favor below
The reaction to this “Short film”? 2 Dislikes to 1 like on Youtube. Bad? Yeah, but not the worst that Gillette had coming for them.
Gillette’s attempted to target the topic of “Toxic Masculinity” to gain publicity with “Politically Correctness”. However, many loyal customers of Gillette views it as “Feminist Propaganda”
Tweets of rebuking;
However, there is an old saying, “There is no such thing as bad publicity”. Positive responses are still heard from the public.
I suppose if you lose some, you gain some. Gillette commented that they will not go back on what they “Believe” (name of the short film), despite the backlash. Because its the right thing to do.
However, Gillette’s parenting company, Procter & Gamble recorded a 8 Billion dollar loss after the campaign.
Do you think Gillette is right? Despite the huge loss? Share your views in the comments!
Cedric's Binary Brain 