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There are 11 comments on POV: Where Gillette’s New Ad Went Wrong

  1. “The prominent naming rights on Gillette Stadium further complicate matters by ties to a sport steeped in controversy and teeming with associations of aggressive and ultracompetitive masculinity.” What kind of glue are the authors sniffing to think that anyone at all would care about the naming rights on a football stadium, after all, there are a lot of stadiums across the country with naming rights. And then to make the comment about aggressive and ultracompetitive masculinity… WOW!!!! Is this part of some new liberal movement to tear down masculinity and competiveness as if its a bad thing?

    1. Two questions:

      First, if no one cared about the naming rights to Gillette Stadium, then why would a company pay $240 million for them? [https://bit.ly/2Rw5cdV] Either Procter & Gamble is just throwing that money out the window, or they consider the name a valuable part of the Gillette brand.

      Second, are you making the claim that American football culture doesn’t valorize aggression and violence? Or that toxic masculinity is somehow completely separate from the coding of aggression and violence as masculine traits?

      1. American football culture is exactly the best channeling of aggression and competitiveness by clear rules and punishments. It’s exactly what you should want if you consider aggression and violence to be toxic unless, of course, you’d prefer to crush or drug the competitiveness that is intrinsic to male neuropsychology.

      2. Being a double minority in this country, it has too often been my experience that those who most scream most vocally about “diversity and inclusion” in public are also the ones most likely to be posing in the KKK outfit. (I know I am stealing from the news headlines here, but this really does match my first hand experience.)

      3. OK,I didn’t make my point clear enough, here it is: the fact that Gillette has naming rights over a football stadium doesn’t complicate anything in regards to the stance they took in the ad. Athletics and ultra competiveness are here to say folks, those who don’t embrace it and see it as some thorn in progress are delusional.

        Also, I would argue that football doesn’t valorize violence. I back up my position with the never ending evolution of the rule changes that have made football safer and also has pushed a norm where its ‘not ok’ to deliver hits against defenseless players. Not sure what you are watching on TV, but its not today’s football.

    2. Anonymous — I thought the same thing about naming rights. It’s quite a stretch. I don’t think this is a liberal vs. conservative thing — I think it’s a common sense thing.

  2. Read the whole article and I’m still not sure exactly what your gripe is with the ad. Gillette shouldn’t be allowed to talk about toxic masculinity because it hasn’t “earned” it? What about the ad was incorrect or offensive? The fact that you point to Nike as a good example is also pretty interesting considering how much we know about their products being made by basically slave labor overseas.

  3. Is it possible that because the watch company focused on “building men up” the commercial was more successful?
    The Gillette ad was asking men to take a look at some of their shortcomings and some of the responsibility they had for cultural problems. It seems like a lot of them got very defensive and criticized the commercial rather than use it for some looking inward

  4. If Gillette had shown a guy refusing to enter a strip club, they would have convinced me. THAT is toxic masculinty. But a line of drone grill dads excusing boys rough-housing at a cookout is horrible.

  5. I think this article is spot on in describing the failure of Gillette’s ad vs the success of the others, barring that we don’t discuss the fact that all of these companies seek to gain a profit and will present themselves as socially responsible to do.

    The point made about the name on the stadium highlights the investment Gillette has made historically in classic “masculine” behavior, if you will. This is to say that Gillette doesn’t have the authority(the credibility) to make a claim AGAINST masculine behavior. This is clear as day to me. And therefore indicates that this ad is a desperate and ingenuine grab(and a gamble) at drawing back lost business from “woke millennials“ who are buying elsewhere. I really don’t think it will work.

    And my personal POV is that the ad attacks men on several levels based on stereotypes that don’t exist anymore and by ignoring the fact that many boys grow up without an involved father or any male role model at all, for some. That includes me. Whatever “toxic masculinity” was born in me came from books, television, and females in my life. I 100% believe that if I’d had a man in my life, simply interested in me, day to day, it would’ve changed everything I thought being a man was.

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