Opinions

Are Gillette's Customers More Toxic than its Management?


“When I’m looking for guidance in my life I always turn to a Dow 30 company,” comments Journal reader Robert Middleton. “P&G (Gillette) for my relationship with women.

Goldman Sachs

for child rearing.

Chevron

for a mid-life crisis.

Walgreen’s

for spiritual insights,” he adds.

Mr. Middleton is responding to a new advertisement from

Procter & Gamble

in which the corporate giant seems to be instructing its male customers to improve their behavior.

One of the manliest brands in men’s products has hit on an unusual strategy for divided times: questioning “toxic masculinity.”

Gillette, the Procter & Gamble Co. brand that for three decades has used the tagline, “The Best A Man Can Get,” is building a new campaign around the #MeToo movement, a risky approach that will be the latest test of how successfully big consumer brands can navigate tricky social movements.

The ad, created by the brand’s ad agency Grey and titled “We Believe,” opens with audio of news about the #MeToo movement, bullying and “toxic masculinity.” A narrator goes on to dispute the notion that “boys will be boys,” asking, “Is this the best a man can get? Is it? We can’t hide from it. It has been going on far too long. We can’t laugh it off, making the same old excuses.”

Another reader writes in to express shock that Gillette’s customers have been behaving so badly: “I am guessing that many men, myself included, don’t want to be mistaken for being a toxically masculine Gillette customer. However, given the company’s market share, every man who shaves is at risk. There is really no way to prove that I am not a Gillette user other than to stop shaving. #zztop.”

Like Mr. Middleton, many customers no doubt chuckle at the idea of seeking moral instruction from a corporate marketing department, but any customers so inclined might naturally ask about the company’s history. Ironically, Procter & Gamble seems to have scored a significant victory in the area of harassment law. In 2009 Legal Intelligencer reported:

Making it significantly more difficult for some workers to bring sexual harassment claims, a federal appeals court has ruled that plaintiffs cannot rely on evidence that a supervisor was aware of their alleged mistreatment, but instead must show that a “management level” employee was on notice.

In Huston v. Procter & Gamble Paper Products Corp., a unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals applied classic principles of agency in holding that an employee’s knowledge may be imputed to a corporation “only if that knowledge is important to the function the employee is employed to perform.”

In the context of a sexual harassment claim, the panel concluded, a plaintiff who says her complaints were ignored must show that she complained to a management level employee with the authority to do something about it.

Why didn’t this interesting bit of corporate history make it into the new ad? Of course it’s entirely possible that P&G management had little or no knowledge of the production, and that Gillette marketers relied on an outside agency to craft the new message. The Guardian reports:

The ad was directed by Kim Gehrig of the UK-based production agency, Somesuch. Gehrig was behind the 2015 This Girl Can advertising campaign for Sport England and “Viva La Vulva”, an advertisement for Swedish feminine hygiene brand Libresse.

Somesuch’s website describes it as “an award-winning, global production company.” Whether in the U.S or anywhere else around the globe, it is bound to strike some customers as unfair to vaguely blame roughly half the population for actions of individuals. There may be a reason for the possible disconnect between the creators and the consumers of the ad. Harassment may be a greater problem in the media production industry in which Somesuch operates than in most other industries. This was the implicit message resulting from a 2017 Economist/YouGov survey and a similar message comes through in a new poll from Morning Consult and the Hollywood Reporter. Respondents were much more likely to see sexual harassment and assault as significant problems in the entertainment industry than in the technology industry, for example.

The Morning Consult/Hollywood Reporter survey also found large majorities who were concerned about harassment and assault in the workplace as well as large majorities concerned about false claims of harassment and assault in the workplace. Perhaps not surprisingly, most respondents seem to want aggressive efforts to prevent offenses but also due process for those accused.

Obviously a short television ad doesn’t leave a lot of time for nuance—or for corporate history—but broad-brush condemnations of masculinity are not confined to the producers of media.

The American Psychological Association recently released its new “Guidelines for Psychological Practice With Boys and Men.” In an accompanying note the association says the new guidelines “draw on more than 40 years of research showing that traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful.”

The Guidelines say:

Although there are differences in masculinity ideologies, there is a particular constellation of standards that have held sway over large segments of the population, including: anti-femininity, achievement, eschewal of the appearance of weakness, and adventure, risk, and violence.

It is perhaps self-evident that masculinity involves an absence of femininity, and along with some positive attributes on that list, even violence is unfortunately sometimes of great societal value. This column is not the first to note that over the last century American masculinity has proven quite toxic to Nazis, communists and Islamic terrorists, for which we can all be grateful.

Other parts of the association’s new guidelines may also have readers wondering if perhaps a rather large baby is being thrown out with the bath water. The Guidelines say:

Because of the pressure to conform to traditional masculinity ideology, some men shy away from directly expressing their vulnerable feelings and prefer building connection through physical activities, talking about external matters (e.g., sports, politics, work), engaging in “good-natured ribbing,” exchanging jokes, and seeking and offering practical advice with their male friends…

The guidelines also report that “traditional masculinity is associated with reluctance to seek psychological help.” So on top of all their other faults, traditional men are bad for business.

Now Procter & Gamble will find out what men think of its Gillette business.

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(Teresa Vozzo helps compile Best of the Web.)

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Mr. Freeman is the co-author of “Borrowed Time,” now available in English from HarperBusiness and coming soon in Chinese.





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