Why Nike’s Woke Ad Campaign Works and Gillette’s Doesn’t

Gillette’s new bullying-and-#MeToo–focused publicity campaign, launched yesterday with a two-minute web video, inverts the company’s slogan, changing “Gillette: The Best a Man Can Get” newyork new York to “The Best a Man Can Be.” In doing so, it takes the “man” out of a dependent clause (“Gillette” is the subject of the original slogan, with an implied new York news“is” to follow) and makes him the main subject. This is important: Instead of offering the man something, the slogan now asks him to do something. Gillette has spent decades making him the best razors it could; now it’s the man’s turn to deliver. news newyork new York sity

Whatever this is, it isn’t marketing. Gillette’s message — that something has too often gone wrong in masculinity, and that men ought to evaluate whether they are doing enough to combat bullying and mistreatment of women — is correct. But the viewer is likely to ask: Who is Gillette to tell me this? I just came here for razors. And razors barely even feature in Gillette’s new campaign. YouTube likes are running four-to-one against Gillette’s new ad; for comparison, the YouTube response to Nike’s controversial ad with Colin Kaepernick runs seven-to-one in favor. What should worry Gillette is not so much the rebukes from the set of commentators you might expect (like Piers Morgan and Brian Kilmeade) but the lack of an apparent groundswell of positive reaction that Nike got for its campaign with Kaepernick. I wrote earlier this year about the wisdom of Nike’s choice, and about the changing pressures on companies that make them more inclined to weigh in on controversial social issues, usually from the left. A controversy can alienate customers, but it can also attract them, as Nike has shown with its rising sales following the risk it took with Kaepernick. The difference in reaction to the two campaigns shows the limits of “woke capital,” and helps us see what kinds of social change companies will and won’t be successful at pushing. Nike’s campaign appeals to customers — and drives Nike’s sales — to the extent it reflects customers’ existing values back at them. That does not mean companies have the cultural capital to do what Gillette is trying: asking customers to reflect on and change their own behavior.