- 11 October 2025
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- 48
The $8 Billion Story of Corporate Self-Destruction
How Gillette Shaved Off Its Own Legacy: A Weekend that Turned a Trusted Brand into a Headline
In January 2019, a two-minute ad hit the internet, and everything changed.
People watched. They reacted.
They filmed themselves smashing razors on camera and posted the clips.
Hashtags flared. “Boycott Gillette” trended.
Customer service lines flooded. By Monday, a brand that had been part of family bathrooms for generations was suddenly fighting for its reputation.
This wasn’t a stock tumble or a product failure. It was a culture storm triggered by an advertisement. In a few days the ad’s intended message, “a call to rethink aggressive male behavior,” became a lightning rod. The backlash was fast, loud, and relentless. For Gillette, the damage wasn’t only emotional; analysts say the company suffered huge revenue declines in the months that followed.
What started as a marketing pivot ended up as a boardroom crisis that forced marketing teams and CEOs everywhere to rethink one blunt reality: in the social media era, brands can’t lecture the customers who built them without paying a steep price.
Gillette’s Rise: How a Razor Became a Cultural Fixture
To understand why the ad landed so hard, you need to see what was at risk. Gillette didn’t become famous by accident. Since the early 1900s the company tied itself to male rituals and identity. It transformed shaving from a skill to a daily brand promise: smoother, easier, better. “The best a man can get” a slogan introduced in 1989, was more than a tagline. It became shorthand for success, grooming, and self-respect across generations.
Gillette invested in sport sponsorships, celebrity endorsements, and product innovation (from the Track to the Sensor). By the time Procter & Gamble bought Gillette in 2005, the brand controlled a dominant share of premium razors around the world. For many men, Gillette was a default: a brand passed from father to son, a trusted morning ritual.
That kind of cultural credibility is fragile and precious. A brand like Gillette accumulates capital in the form of habit, familiarity and identity. And when you touch identity, you risk emotion.
Reimagining Masculinity for a New Era
By 2019, the conversation about gender and accountability had intensified. The, MeToo movement shifted how companies considered workplace behavior, advertising and corporate values. Gillette’s leadership decided it was time to “evolve” the brand, to move from product messaging to social commentary.
The result was a short film that called out bullying, harassment and toxic masculinity, asking men to step up and be better role models. The creative team wanted to combine product with purpose: to say Gillette supported a healthier idea of manhood and, in doing so, be on the “right side of history.”
On paper it was a modern, socially aware move. In practice, it was a high-risk repositioning that changed the brand’s voice from coach to critic, and it did so without first testing how long-time customers might respond.
How Ordinary Users Became a Movement 
The ad launched globally at a set hour. The intended response, conversation and applause, arrived, but so did something else: outrage. Social platforms filled with comments labeling the ad as an attack on men rather than an invitation to improvement.
Clips of men crushing, burning, or throwing away Gillette products went viral. The “dislike” count on the video exploded. Search engines prioritized reaction videos over the original. Retailers reported that customers were bypassing Gillette on shelves.
That velocity is the modern amplifier effect: social media turns individual anger into collective action in minutes. Gillette had provoked a response that moved from emotion to behavior. For many customers the ad felt like a rebuke from a brand they trusted, and trust, once broken, is hard to repair.
The Financial Hit
Controversy alone would have been painful. The real test was the bottom line.
Analysts tracked rapid declines in Gillette sales and wider grooming categories. Some independent studies later put the revenue impact in the hundreds of millions over months. Competitors, especially disruption-focused startups that offered cheaper, subscription models, took advantage. Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s, already pitching convenience and value, saw spikes in interest and market share.
Beyond immediate sales, the ad created a longer-term cost: erosion of a premium halo that justified Gillette’s higher prices. Shaving creams, gels, and accessories tied to the brand also suffered. For a product category where habit matters more than hype, losing habitual buyers can be catastrophic.
In the wake of the controversial “We Believe” ad, Procter & Gamble faced an $8 billion write-down on its Gillette division, leading to a $5.24 billion quarterly loss in that period.
Why the Campaign Failed
Marketing fails like this rarely come from a single error. The Gillette case is instructive because it bundles several avoidable mistakes into a single, teachable moment.
- Misreading the Audience
Gillette’s core customer base felt ignored and lectured. The ad assumed the audience would welcome a moral lesson from a legacy brand. It overlooked the fact that many customers bought Gillette for functionality and tradition, not cultural commentary.
- Over Indexing Values Without a Brand Bridge
Taking a stand on social issues isn’t inherently wrong. The problem comes when the stance lacks a natural connection to the product or the customer’s expectations of the brand. A razor brand can support good behavior, but customers expect that message to be earned and tactfully framed.
- Poor Segmentation and Testing
The campaign rolled out globally and loudly. There’s little public evidence of extensive market testing across demographics and geographies. A more cautious rollout or A/B testing could have revealed strong negative reactions among key segments.
- Tone and Execution Misfires
The ad’s tone came off as accusatory for many viewers. Communications that ask customers to change are more likely to land when they honor the listener first, not when they start from judgment.
- Crisis Response that Hardened Rather than Healed
When sales slid and the backlash intensified, the company’s public defense of the campaign, framing losses as “worth it”, signaled indifference to alienated buyers. That hardened opposition and turned a fixable PR issue into a credibility crisis.
Who Gained and Who Paid
One immediate winner was the subscription razor model. Companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s were already positioned as challenger brands offering value and convenience. The Gillette controversy accelerated customers’ switch to alternatives that felt less judgmental and more aligned with utility and price.
For Gillette, the loss was compound: short-term revenue, long-term brand equity, and the erosion of trust that had taken a century to build. Procter & Gamble, as the parent company, absorbed the financial hit and the reputational fallout. Inside, the crisis sparked internal debates about brand purpose, audience insight, and whether marketing should ever prioritize values over customers.
What Went Wrong at the Top
A brand is the cumulative result of leadership decisions. In this case, executives embraced a progressive creative vision but failed to calibrate how that vision would be perceived by legacy customers. Worse, when faced with the fallout, top leaders defended the decision as an intentional, value-led stance, a defense that looked like hubris to outsiders.
Leaders should ask themselves:
- Who exactly are we talking to?
- What existing relationship do we have with them?
- How will core customers interpret our change in tone?
- Do we have a playbook to respond if things go wrong?
This story reminds executives that authenticity matters, but so does humility. If a brand claims to represent or change behavior, it must do so through empathy and with a clear strategy that honors the people who built it.
Lesson for Brands in the Social Media Era
The Gillette example is a modern marketing parable. It shows how fast culture, commerce, and technology intersect, and how that intersection can be volatile.
A few broader lessons:
- Know your core first. Purpose-driven marketing can be powerful, but not at the cost of alienating the very customers who sustain you.
- Test loudly, not globally. Pilot campaigns, gather feedback, and iterate before a full launch.
- Separate corporate values from brand voice. A company can support social causes through philanthropy or corporate policies while keeping product messaging focused on the customer.
- Prepare for amplification. Social media can escalate negative sentiment quickly. Have rapid, humble, and restorative communication plans ready.
- Measure beyond likes. Track behavioral signals (repeat purchases, returns, category spend), not just sentiment.
Recovering from a brand shock isn’t impossible; it takes time, consistency and credibility. A practical recovery path includes:
- Listen deeply. Conduct unfiltered research with long-time customers to understand their feelings and needs.
- Apologize and clarify. If messaging caused pain, a candid explanation and an expression of empathy often works better than a defensive posture.
- Rebuild through utility. Release product innovations or customer-first policies (loyalty programs, price adjustments) that remind customers why they chose the brand.
- Segment communication. Tailor messaging by demographic and region. What lands in one market can fail in another.
- Earn the right to speak. If Gillette wants to champion social issues, do it through programs that involve communities and demonstrate impact, not just through an ad.
Trust Beats Trend
Marketing used to be about crafting clever lines and buying big media. Today it’s about knowing people, what they value, what they fear, and how they talk about their identity online.
Gillette’s 2019 ad wasn’t a failure because it tried to be progressive; it failed because it treated customers as a monolith and forgave the brand for lecturing instead of listening. The result was not just a PR debacle, it was a strategic lesson for every brand that believes culture wars can be won by ads alone.
In the age of instant amplification, brands are custodians of trust. Lose that trust, and the financial and cultural costs can echo for years.
If there is a final lesson here for marketers and CEOs, it’s this: purpose is powerful, but only when it is grounded in empathy, earned through action, and communicated with respect for the people who carry your brand forward.
