Gillette advert. Hit or miss?

There’s a lot of people hating this advert for ‘telling them what to do / how to be’.

Brands have been doing that since the dawn of advertising.

Through advertsing, Brands have shaped our societies, our cultures, our desires, our politics, our identities. It. Is. A. Fact.

So here we have Gillette, one of the most well known shaving product companies, using positive social messaging as part of a sales campaign.

Scale it up to see it more clearly.

Imagine if this was how advertsing were typically done.

Imagine if this were ‘normal’ in terms of Branding.

Seems obvious to me. It would change our aspirations, our acceptances, our identities and society. There has been Trillions of pounds and dollars spent on defining our aspirations of masculinity and femininity, a collective campaign of cultural engineering on a huge scale actioned by thousands of different brands for decades and decades, since the advent of advertising. Advertsing shapes culture. It’s already shaped it. It’s happened, and is happening, every second of every day. Here, with this Gillette ad, we see a campaign to sculpt it in a different direction, one already happening.

A brilliant campaign, in terms of engagement and public conversation.

Here’s the test of it. If they mean it, they’ll continue in this vein.

If they don’t, they’ll revert to old stereotypes.

I sincerely hope they are sincere. I believe so, for one.