On January 13th, 2019, Gillette posted a video asking, "Is this the best a man can get? " The ad showed men bullying each other, harassing women, and talking over female colleagues. Then suggested their customers were part of the problem.
Within 48 hours, the ad had racked up 400,000 dislikes, making it one of the most disliked advertisements in YouTube history. Customers started posting videos of themselves throwing Gillette razors in the trash. The hashtag Boycott Gillette trended worldwide.
6 months later, Proctor and Gamble announced an $8 billion writedown on the Gillette brand. The division CEO's response when asked about the backlash, a price worth paying. This is the story of how Gillette, a company that had dominated men's grooming for 118 years, decided to challenge its own customers on masculinity itself, and how that decision became one of the most expensive marketing lessons in modern business history.
To understand the collapse, you need to understand the empire. In 1901, King Camp Gillette invented the safety razor. Before that, men used straight razors that needed constant sharpening.
Gillette's idea was revolutionary. Cheap handles, expensive, disposable blades. It was the razor and blades business model before anyone called it that.
By World War I, the US military gave every soldier a Gillette razor. When they came home, they brought the habit with them. For the next century, [music] Gillette didn't just dominate shaving.
It defined masculinity in advertising. Their ads featured athletes, celebrities, and aspirational imagery. In 1989, they launched the tagline, "The best a man can get," and men bought into it.
By the By 2018, Gillette faced a problem advertising couldn't solve. Market share had dropped from 70% to 54%. Revenue in the grooming division had fallen 26% over 3 years.
The brand that had dominated for over a century was hemorrhaging customers. Part of this was cultural. Beards became fashionable.
Men's average shaving frequency dropped from 3. 7 to 3. 2 [music] times per week over the decade.
Younger men grew facial hair, watched YouTube tutorials on beard grooming, bought oils and balms instead of razors. The [music] US shaving market itself experienced contraction during this period. Manual razor sales fell 5.
1% [music] year-over-year from 2017 to 2018. But the bigger [music] threat came from a different direction entirely. In 2011, Two Guys launched Dollar Shave [music] Club.
The following year, they made a YouTube video where the founder said directly to camera, In 2018, taking a stand had become a marketing strategy. The examples were everywhere. Nike made Colin [music] Kaepernick, who knelt during the national anthem, the face of their dream crazy campaign.
After the Parkland shooting, [music] Dick's sporting goods dropped assault rifles entirely. Patagonia went even further, suing the Trump administration over public lands. These [music] weren't fringe campaigns.
They were coming from global brands with billions in revenue. Neielson research showed 66% [music] of consumers would pay more for products from socially responsible companies. Marketing agencies were delivering the same message [music] to their clients.
On January 13th, 2019, Gillette uploaded the film to YouTube. The ad opened with men staring into mirrors as audio of news reports played. References to bullying, the #meto movement, and toxic masculinity.
Then it showed a series of scenes. Boys fighting while fathers muttered, "Boys will be boys. " Men kept calling women on the street.
Male executives talking over female colleagues in meetings. Then actor Terry Cruz appeared in footage from his congressional testimony. Men need to hold other men accountable.
The ad shifted to positive examples. A father stopping his son from bullying. A man intervening in street harassment.
Young boys learning respect. The film ran 1 minute and 48 seconds and not a single [music] razor appeared. The YouTube comment section exploded the answer became clear.
PNG's earnings reports revealed the damage. Grooming segment net sales fell from $6. 5 billion in fiscal 2018 to $6.
2 billion in fiscal 2019, a decline of $352 million in a single year. And the market share numbers backed it up. According to PNG's own annual reports, Gillette's Global Blades and Razor share dropped from nearly 65% to just over 60%, continuing a troubling pattern of decline.
Where did those customers go? The competitors who'd been chipping away at Gillette's dominance suddenly found themselves with an influx of new customers. Dollar Shave Club and Harry's gained market share.
Even Shik, a traditional rival that had struggled for years, saw customers switching. 6 months after the ad launched, PNG held its quarterly August 2019, Marketing Week published an interview with Gary Kum. The interviewer asked directly about the backlash and the $8 billion writedown.
Kum didn't retreat. He called the losses a price worth paying. His reasoning for the majority of people to fall more deeply in love with today's brands.
You have [music] to risk upsetting a small minority. And that's what we've done. The strategy was deliberate.
Gillette was willing to alienate older customers who were leaving anyway. The goal was winning younger, more progressive consumers who represented future growth, trading short-term losses for long-term brand positioning. And there was evidence the strategy generated significant engagement.
Website traffic spiked to the highest levels in 5 years. The brand garnered over 1. 5 million mentions across digital platforms [music] within 24 hours.
On paper, it looked like a win, but the research First, Gillette targeted the wrong audience. The campaign reached people who would praise it, not people who would purchase. Second, they confused product relevance with cultural relevance.
Nike succeeded with Kaepernick because sneakers are public, visible, worn as statements. Razors are private, utilitarian, used in bathrooms where no one's watching. Some products carry cultural meaning.
Others just solve problems. Third, they told existing customers they were the problem. The ad spent most of its runtime showing men behaving badly, then asked those same men to buy razors.
Gary Kum called the backlash a price worth paying. 6 years and $9. 3 billion later, Gillette is still paying it.
Maybe that's the real lesson. You can lecture your customers. You can take a stand.
