Little question that “The Greatest A Man Can Get” is a kind of traces everyone is aware of.
It’s a phrase that formed how generations understood Gillette’s mixture of efficiency and on a regular basis grooming. Throughout the wider Gillette advertising technique, the model has at all times paired product innovation with a transparent viewpoint on what grooming represents.
On this weblog, we discover how Gillette advertising continues to evolve by way of stadium visibility, athlete partnerships, and masculine branding. These components present how the model makes use of cultural touchpoints and bodily areas to remain related.
Hold studying.
What’s Inside
Gillette’s Advertising Combine
Recognizing how product, place, value, and promotion work collectively gives perception into how Gillette sustains its management and positions its Gillette ads.
Product
Gillette’s product providing is constructed round high-quality razors, blades, gels, and associated male grooming gadgets, as you already know. According to a 2016-dated thesis titled “The Way forward for Procuring – New Gross sales and Advertising Methods for Gillette to Develop Market Penetration Amongst Males in 2030” the model “operates worldwide and is the market chief within the male grooming product class.”
Gillette has greater than 15 completely different razor varieties; nonetheless, within the paper titled “Gillette Product and Marketing Innovation,” there’s a assertion that the model expanded its product portfolio to create the complete “bathe expertise”:
The launch of Gillette Hair Care and Physique Wash for males, in addition to its Medical Energy deodorant, represented probably the most vital Gillette model extensions exterior of the razor and blades division, and aimed to strengthen the model’s standing because the world’s main male-grooming authority.
Concerning the launch of Gillette Hair Care and Physique Wash for males, in addition to its Medical Energy deodorant, Chip Bergh, group president, World Private Care, Procter & Gamble, said in an interview:
We’ve earned the belief of the greater than 600 million males who begin their day with a Gillette razor. By providing superior deodorant, physique washes, and shampoos, we’re in a position to reward that belief by giving guys what they need and want in different areas of their grooming routines.
Worth
Within the Gillette advertising combine, pricing is without doubt one of the differentiators.
The mentioned 2016-dated work notes that Gillette’s choices are “dearer than its rivals, because it positions itself as a top quality model.”
The upper value is in keeping with the premium model positioning and helps the claims made in Gillette ads about efficiency and high quality.
It additionally creates a buffer that enables the model to put money into advertising and preserve margins. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs are additionally conscious that the moist shaving class is declining, and cheaper personal labels are growing their share. Meaning the pricing technique have to be balanced with worth communication and promotion (we are going to take a look at it within the SWOT-threats part deeply.)
Place (Distribution)
For the place part of the advertising combine, Gillette makes use of intensive distribution channels.
Gillette’s merchandise are offered in additional than 200 international locations and territories, and the first retail channels for razors and blades are drugstores (which account for over half of all gross sales in that class) and supermarkets/discounters.
From a Gillette advertising technique, large bodily presence is crucial because it helps model availability and the premium narrative (that you could find the model in every single place) and promotional tie-ins (for instance, in-store shows or bundled provides).
Gillette demonstrates sturdy adaptability within the context of digital transformation and e-commerce; subscription fashions, such because the Gillette Shave Membership, are highlighted as key strategic alternatives.
Promotion
The promotion arm, which incorporates Gillette ads, is the place lots of the strategic insights come collectively.
Gillette makes use of high-visibility campaigns, sturdy model cues round efficiency and masculinity, and sometimes giant media investments. In different phrases, the model has rooted its success in sturdy investments in advertising actions.
As well as, to maintain its Gillette advertising technique, the model segments its goal audiences & market share: The examine identifies 4 segments with completely different wants and gross sales targets for development. Meaning Gillette emphasizes product advantages (precision, high quality), and makes use of channels that help these narratives.
Gillette’s SWOT Evaluation
⚔️ Strengths
- Gillette has been the gold customary for over a century, a lot in order that it maintains a number one market share within the moist shaving class. The identify itself is synonymous with razor & blades. It provides an virtually unparalleled degree of brand name recognition.
- The model follows a profitable “razor-and-blade” enterprise mannequin; each new multi-blade system (like Mach3 and Fusion) and expertise (like FlexBall) permits for a premium pricing construction.
- As a flagship model of P&G, Gillette has a robust, international distribution and retail presence. That ensures its merchandise are available in supermarkets, pharmacies, and small native outlets throughout a whole bunch of nations.
- The model has a historical past of iconic, high-budget campaigns like “The Greatest a Man Can Get” that construct sturdy emotional connections. The backing of P&G gives deep market analysis and media planning assets.
📉 Weaknesses
- Gillette’s premium pricing, significantly for substitute cartridges, creates a gap for low-cost challengers to place themselves as worth alternate options.
- The excessive price and disposable nature of the multi-blade cartridges make the model susceptible to price-sensitive shoppers and environmentally acutely aware shoppers.
- Some shoppers view the brand new product merchandise that embrace extra blades and extra options as an excuse for increased costs.
- Whereas a pacesetter in razors, Gillette just isn’t the market chief in all males’s toiletries.
📈 Alternatives
- The boys’s private care market is rising past simply shaving. There’s an opportunity to totally diversify the portfolio into skincare, beard care, and males’s specialised hair care.
- Many creating economies are seeing a surge in shopper demand for private grooming merchandise. Tailoring merchandise and advertising to satisfy native shopper wants and affordability provides vital development potential.
- Whereas challenged by DTC manufacturers, Gillette has a chance to solidify its personal subscription companies and improve its digital advertising to regain management of the shopper relationship.
- Growing and selling a line of extra sustainable, reusable, or recyclable merchandise would enchantment to the rising section of shoppers who’re prepared to pay a premium for environmental duty.
🚨 Threats
- The rise in high-quality, low-cost personal label blades from main retailers gives a less expensive substitute, placing fixed downward strain on Gillette’s pricing energy.
- Developments just like the rise of beards and various facial hair types scale back the frequency of shaving. It additionally decreases the consumption charge of substitute cartridges and impacts the core enterprise mannequin.
- Excessive-profile campaigns (significantly “The Greatest Males Can Be” marketing campaign) can spark controversy and result in shopper backlash and momentary destructive publicity that may harm model picture.
In response to the paper titled “Gillette Marketing Evolution,” there’s yet one more menace to the value:
One of many biggest risks is the decreased frequency of males who shave. There’s an ongoing development of males preferring to develop and preserve beards than to shave it off, which can result in a lower in gross sales. Moreover, Gillette faces competitors from firms like Greenback Shave Membership and Harry’s for its value.
How does a model handle to remain related in a class that hardly ever stands nonetheless? Gillette offers us a helpful reply.
The corporate has constructed its status on a transparent, layered strategy to segmentation that strikes throughout demographics, psychographics, behaviors, and pricing. For entrepreneurs, it reveals how a long-standing model can rethink who it serves and the way it speaks to them.
Beneath, you’ll discover Gillette’s market segmentation; demographic and psychographic.
Psychographic segmentation of Gillette focuses on the mindset of grooming-conscious shoppers and their self-image.
Stadium Advertising and Masculine Branding
Have you ever ever requested your self why sure environments really feel naturally highly effective for a model?
Take into consideration the final time you watched a match and felt the group shift—the second when everybody is concentrated on the identical factor. Stadium advertising is about that shared consideration. At its core, it means inserting a model inside an surroundings the place individuals are totally engaged. And that sort of advertising is what Gillette’s been doing for years.
As we defined earlier, the model chooses areas that echo its core message: precision. Stadiums are good for that. Each motion in a stadium is judged intently, and that sense of efficiency aligns with the story Gillette has instructed for many years.
At that time, we should remind you that placement is a storytelling choice, not nearly media.
Masculine branding works on related cues. It displays concepts tied to self-discipline, management, efficiency, and self-presentation. These themes give a model a transparent construction for the way it speaks and what it represents.
Furthermore, masculine branding is rooted in behaviors linked to deliberate effort. Gillette has stored this tone as a result of it provides consistency, one thing many manufacturers discover onerous to take care of over time.
After we view stadium advertising and masculine branding facet by facet, the connection turns into clear. Each depend on symbols and moments that inform the viewers, “That is about intention.” And intention is one thing Gillette works to speak.
Gillette’s Advertising Technique & Campaigns
In relation to advertising technique, Gillette outlines 5 built-in strategic decisions that information its enterprise: a targeted product portfolio, superiority throughout model touchpoints, productiveness, constructive disruption, and an agile group. These decisions create what the corporate calls “balanced development and worth creation.”
In different phrases, Gillette has at all times centered its model on efficiency. The Gillette Annual Report helps this by stating that Gillette’s portfolio is dependent upon “efficiency [that] drives model alternative.”
As an alternative of relying solely on mass media (Gillette is thought for its conventional promoting efforts), the model now makes use of short-form video, creator-led tutorials, digital-first storytelling, and platform-specific product demonstrations to point out how every product works. This turns product options into social-friendly content material that matches the tempo of digital advertising.
Latest strikes in stadium advertising and refreshed masculine branding show how the corporate continues to adapt.
Athlete partnerships tailored for Gillette’s Advertising
Gillette’s historical past with international icons like Roger Federer, Thierry Henry and Tiger Woods was constructed on conventional promoting, however the relevance of those partnerships has shifted.
At this time, athlete content material sits inside a digital ecosystem the place clips, behind-the-scenes footage, coaching routines, and private grooming rituals reside.
The most effective half is that these ambassadors will not be simply faces of the model, however social belongings. Their international affect strengthens the model’s credibility for youthful audiences searching for authenticity quite than scripted endorsement.
As we said above, Gillette has been investing in high-impact bodily areas, together with stadium placements, athlete-centric occasions, and in-venue branding.
And sure, stadium advertising serves three features for Gillette:
- It reinforces legacy associations with athletic excellence.
- It generates natural social content material.
- It responds to fashionable media fragmentation.
Addressing cultural rigidity with intentional communication
Gillette’s advertising technique additionally addresses masculinity; in a media surroundings formed by dialog, critique, and shared commentary, the model has moved from conventional depictions of confidence and efficiency to a extra reflective model of male id.
The communication technique behind the model now considers:
- How males see themselves
- What behaviours are celebrated or questioned in tradition
- How does grooming connects to id, not simply utility
This shift just isn’t about distancing from masculinity. As an alternative, it reframes masculine branding into one thing extra fashionable and accountable.
Nevertheless, it isn’t potential to say that Gillette’s advertising technique is at all times good at creating acclaimed ads about masculinity. Let’s see “that advert” which induced a public backlash.
Gillette’s “We Consider: The Greatest Males Can Be”
Again in 2019, Gillette launched a brief movie on YouTube titled “We Consider: The Greatest Males Can Be.” It was a marketing campaign in response to the #MeToo motion and addressed destructive habits amongst males that perpetuates poisonous masculinity.
Nevertheless, the video confronted heavy backlash, with greater than 1 million downvotes on YouTube and 1000’s of destructive feedback. It has even obtained criticism on social media channels, with many males calling for a “boycott of the model.”
As we said earlier than, for many years, Gillette portrayed confidence and efficiency by way of ambassadors like Federer and Woods. That historical past created expectations: Gillette was the model of high-performance males.
The mentioned marketing campaign shifted dramatically from this acquainted framing. As an alternative of celebrating males, it highlighted destructive behaviors like bullying, harassment, and sure types of aggressiveness—and linked them to poisonous masculinity.
Gillette’s advert supposed to encourage higher habits. However for a portion of the viewers, the message felt extra like criticism than encouragement.
The central rigidity was this: Shoppers anticipate manufacturers to mirror them, not right them.
What’s extra, the analysis titled “Gillette ‘We believe: the best men can be’ – the advertisement that shaved itself off the market,” famous the next about Gillette’s advertising marketing campaign:
Individuals additionally reacted negatively to the commercial as a result of model’s normal involvement in political debates in addition to the notion that Gillette was taking a ‘leftist’, woke facet. Furthermore, commenters recognized and disapproved of many actions carried out by Gillette that didn’t align with the trigger they had been supporting of their commercial, such because the implementation of the pink tax and using youngster labor.
Gillette’s social media presence completely displays the identical ideas that form the broader Gillette advertising technique: product efficiency, cultural relevance (father and son relationship), and athlete-driven credibility. No have to say, social media for retail is a key part; it allows the model to make use of these themes on platforms to drive direct engagement and handle campaigns (like #TheBestMenCanBe).
A central component of Gillette advertising is the model’s long-standing declare of technological superiority. On social platforms, that is translated into:
- fast demonstrations of razor options
- close-up grooming tutorials
- comparisons that spotlight consolation, smoothness, or engineering
- creator-led opinions that really feel extra private than conventional adverts
Take quite a few how-to-shave movies on YouTube:
Why does this format work? Shaving is visible, sensible, and straightforward to point out in a 15-second clip.
After the mentioned “We Consider” marketing campaign, Gillette has used social media to border masculinity in an on a regular basis method. The model focuses on themes akin to self-care as a traditional routine, father-son moments seem and grooming tutorials as person generated content material.
The next video, as one other instance, bought virtually 90 million views; which means common experiences like dad and mom instructing kids life rituals work nice in that trade.
Just like its conventional advertising technique, on social media, Gillette aligns with footballers (Premier League, worldwide gamers, rising skills), cricketers (India-specific partnerships, particularly with youthful stars), Olympic athletes, esports and gaming personalities, health creators and efficiency coaches.
Lastly, Gillette makes use of social platforms to attach new product launches with digital commerce touchpoints, as we will see in profitable retail advertising campaigns. This contains:
- retailer-tagged posts
- direct-link adverts for refills or subscriptions
shoppable content material aligned with new product drops
It helps the model’s broader concentrate on class management and creates fast pathways from consciousness to buy.
FAQ about Gillette’s Advertising
What’s Gillette’s general advertising technique and model positioning?
Gillette focuses on efficiency, grooming experience, and a extra present view of masculinity. The model mixes product launches with private storytelling, which helps it really feel each acquainted and related. This stability helps gilette market share by preserving the model related to actual grooming moments.
How does Gillette use promoting to take care of its international market share?
A lot of Gillette promoting blends clear product demonstrations with emotional themes. A standard Gillette commercial highlights precision, consolation, or a brand new function, then ties it to confidence or on a regular basis care. This mix helps the model defend its management.
Gilette stadium advertising retains the model current in main sports activities moments. Stadium visibility travels far past the venue by way of fan pictures, spotlight clips, and creator content material. This provides Gillette a gentle stream of relevance that strengthens its id.
How has Gillette tailored its advertising technique to achieve youthful audiences?
Youthful audiences (significantly Gen Z) meet the model through short-form movies, creator routines, and extra relatable grooming tales. Father–son moments, on a regular basis shaves, and softer expressions of masculinity assist the model really feel approachable.
What are the important thing components of Gillette’s digital and social media advertising campaigns?
Gillette makes use of fast shaving demonstrations (how-to-shave tutorials), athlete-led content material, shoppable posts, and user-generated moments. The model reveals how their merchandise work in easy, actual settings, which inserts the tempo of contemporary feeds and retains grooming conversations energetic.
How does Gillette differentiate its model from rivals within the shaving trade?
Gillette stands out by way of innovation, historical past, sports activities partnerships, and emotional storytelling. Opponents typically concentrate on value or simplicity. Gillette focuses on efficiency, id, and belief, giving the model a stronger level of distinction.
