Back in January Gillette had the brilliant idea to run ads targeting men and opposing their "toxic masculinity" in a strange ad campaign.
For some reason Gillette had the idea to run an ad campaign based on attacking their customer base.
During the ad Gillette talks about how males in the United States are sexist and use bullying tactics too much.
In the ads there were 43 males who were projected as sexist bullies. 42 of those males were white. There were 8 men portrayed as heroes in the ads. Seven of those were black.
It should come as no surprise that the ad did not do well. In the first two days on YouTube there were more than 642,000 down votes. Currently it stands at over 1.5 million down votes.
This move did not pay off for Gillette. In the second quarter of 2019 Gillette lost $8 billion.
Per Reuters:
P&G reported a net loss of about $5.24 billion, or $2.12 per share, for the quarter ended June 30, due to an $8 billion non-cash writedown of Gillette. For the same period last year, P&G’s net income was $1.89 billion, or 72 cents per share.
It turns out that calling out men for toxic masculinity and taking a feminist approach to selling men's razors was not a good idea. Who could have seen this coming?
There were many great responses to the news about Gillette losing billions on Twitter:
Worked out well for Gillette with that f*ck awful ad they put out, lost billions..
— Ghostdog1656 (@ghostdog1656) August 1, 2019
@ProctorGamble
Not just Gillette! In honor of the offensive ads, I also gave up other P&G products like Tide & Head & Shoulders!#VoteWithYourWalletGet Woke, Go Broke: Gillette Loses BILLIONS After Sexist and Lecturing #MeToo Razor Ads https://t.co/58VjNvpsZJ via @gatewaypundit
— Mike M-erica (@mmenzel765) August 1, 2019
Many companies are targeting the "woke" crowd with their ad campaigns. Gillette is learning the hard way that this is not always a great idea.
"Get woke go broke."