Get Woke, Go Broke: Gillette's Second Ad with Pandering Redemption Arc tries to Disallow YouTube Comments and Impressions, Fails

Remember the polarizing Gillette ad, 'We Believe the Best Men Can Be', released a couple of months ago? Looking at those ratios, it's clear that most of the vocal part of the internet, at least, male and female alike, found the ad very problematic. Toxic, even. As always, the best (worst?) content is always in the comments section -- it currently sits at 29.5 million views, with 418,608 comments, the easy majority of which are very derisive, with 1.4 million 'Dislikes' to 776 thousand 'Likes', a ratio of almost 2:1 negative. On top of this, many people are alleging that many of the YouTube comments have been deleted and dislikes significantly reduced, as well, suggesting the ratios for Gillette's ad are far worse, in reality (many commenters and articles noted they were as much as 10:1 negative).

Depending on their core political beliefs, you could fairly accurately determine a person's opinion of the ad, with some seeing the ad as a rare example of corporate social awareness and responsibility, a right-and-proper 'woke' calling-out of western men being outright guilty of, or at least complicit in, rampant 'toxic masculinity'. Others saw it as just another example of off-the-rails, dishonest feminist misandry and oversimplified or entirely inaccurate hyper-generalizations of western male culture, all while insulting their customers and pandering to third-wave (what I refer to as 'vulgar' as opposed to 'classical') feminist ideologues. While I initially found the ad to be a mixed bag, at best, I could definitely appreciate the arguments as to why it was interpreted as particularly misandrist, by so many. 

Regardless of one's thoughts on the ad, it's safe to say it was a huge marketing blunder, and I'm not going to delve deeply into that, here -- it has been done well enough, elsewhere, already.

Today, Gillette released a new ad, titled 'Every Hero Sweats'. While still playing it safe so as to not undermine their infamous previous ad or irritate the virtue-signaling hordes of Leftists, they seem to be running to the opposite side of the spectrum in an all-too-transparent attempt to placate 'those' who could be 'the only ones' irritated by the whole ordeal -- blonde, white conservatives, 'obviously'! The ad even satisfies that old conservative trope of military 'hero' worship, putting it right in the title of the ad. It all seems a bit too contrived, misses the sticking-point entirely, and, also, is probably too little too late. Unfortunately for them, any potential good faith in the corporate executives and marketing teams at Gillette likely evaporated into thin air when they drew that line in the sand with their first ad.

I expect they realize this, because as one can plainly see -- they've disabled any method of directly commenting on the video. No comments, likes, or dislikes are allowed. In their reach for absolution, they have, once again, firmly placed themselves behind the line they've already drawn, just now utilizing the tool of censorship to try to shield themselves from the fallout of their short-sightedness. 

Luckily, the time of politically biased content censorship is on its way to being over.