Gillette's New Ad

 

Gillette's New Ad

Basically everyone has seen this video, or at least heard about it, and for the most part, people hate it. On Youtube it has over a million dislikes and it is hard to find a comment that is not about how someone is never going to buy this product again or that this is so insulting to the entirety of the male gender. Why did an advertisement about stopping systematic toxic masculinity get so much hate? 

Gillette's tactics seemed to have backfired but did they really? This ad uses a mix of fear and 'slippery-slope' persuasion in an effort to make it seem like their company, more than their products, are working to combat toxic masculinity and that not supporting their cause and company along with ignoring the problem, will cause the problem to continue. From the reactions to this ad, people seemed to go on the defense and lash out against the company for making accusations that all men are problematic. It also seems that Gillette was attempting to appeal to societies need to feel safe. This presents itself in the act of stopping violence or upsetting behavior by others in the video. It is hard not to feel better about a situation when you know someone is protecting you, which is what you are supposed to think when watching a father defend a boy and act as a hero type to his own son. This seemed to come of as a 'preachy' view on the issues presented. It seems that people took this appeal to safety as a comment on how all men have toxic traits and that people are not doing anything about it.

The ad is not-so-subtly, and very explicitly saying that society has a problem with men being sexist/objectifying women, as well as encouraging violence in men, which is an issue being faced currently. The way that these issues were presented in the video left it open to the interpretation that all men are toxic because of the very clear stance Gillette took on the subject, without explicitly stating that not every man is a problem. However, it is implicitly shown that the opposite is true. By having men stand in the way of violence shows that Gillette is saying that as not everyone is part of the problem but doing nothing makes you part of it. If you don't read into the subtleties in this advertisement, like it seems many in the world didn't, you might disagree with the ad and possibly even turn on the company, and boycott its products like many have.