Stubble Trouble

Six years ago, a new Gillette commercial indicting all men for the sins of some prompted this discussion of biblical masculinity between IC and me. We concluded the sort of male behavior encouraged in scripture is not toxic, and that the problem is not that men today are too masculine, but that they are not masculine in biblical ways … and that’s when they are masculine at all.

It wasn’t just Christians who were turned off by Gillette’s politically correct hectoring. The ad was brutally panned within hours of airing, and I was curious how much money Procter & Gamble was prepared to lose to make the ideological point it was pushing. Well, now we know.

Calling it “the fastest corporate revolt in human history”, this YouTube video documents the unprecedented reaction to the commercial. The long-term estimated cost in lost sales and other revenue to the “king of razors” is allegedly in the neighborhood of $17 billion, including a six-month earnings dip that was more than most companies earn in six decades. Like many, many other men at the time, I switched out my razor for a generic and haven’t used a Gillette product since.

Going on six years, I wondered whether maybe the corporation had learned its lesson. The video didn’t precisely answer that question, but what its investigation does make clear is that the commercial was no mistake. It was calculated self-immolation. Six months into the sales nosedive, both the Gillette CEO and P&G’s executives doubled down on the philosophy espoused in the video, convinced the social justice message they were sending was more important than profits.

Did they really believe this? Do they still believe it today? Who knows. Other major corporations have since made similar virtue-signaling moves and been unable to rebound from the customer pushback. Still others, observing the trend, have abandoned social justice messaging, opting to stick to what they do best: sell products rather than ideology. That’s a welcome change.

A few interesting takeaways for believers from all this:

• Your opinion matters if you back it up with action. Gillette may not have heeded the message they received from former customers, but the competitors who benefited, at least temporarily, from their loss in market share definitely got the message. Not every corporation is “too big to fail”.
• More people agree with us than we may think. Christians sometimes think we are alone in objecting to the woke nonsense with which we are constantly bombarded, but it seems a quiet majority of our neighbors feel much the same way about it, even if they fear to express their opinions out loud. Elijah discovered this truth, and it remains true today.
• Being principled comes at a cost, even in small matters. Frankly, I miss Gillette products. While pricy, their higher-end disposable razors provide by far the cleanest shave with the least nicks of anything I’ve ever tried. That said, a few nicks are a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things.
• A single public slip can hurt a good name for years. This is probably the most important one. Three years after the fact, media commentators were neutral on whether the ad seriously hurt Gillette’s bottom line long-term. The comment sections tell a different story.

Elders and other servants of Christ, take note.