“Shave India Movement”- Hideous Marketing

Since, I have severely cut down my television hours I am not usually aware of the latest tripe it is feeding.

However, I was scandalized last week at a strange advertisement coming on a prime time business news channel CNBC-Tv18 .It had something got to do with shaving, they were asking women why men should sport a clean shave look, and the sponsors were none other than Procter & Gamble Group’s Gillette.

The highly spirited “Quit India Movement” was about saving the country from the Colonialist exploiters, getting rid of their goods. Now, the consumer goods conglomerate P&G has launched a similar sounding “Shave India Movement”, to sell more razors!! . Imported from Germany, sold by a US company.  Gandhijee must be turning in his grave, at this irony of his movement being a so called inspiration in the 21^st century, to capitalist marketers.

Few facts about, Mach 3 – is a German machine sounding, premier razor of the Gillette group. It is a niche brand for Gillette and it was priced at Rs. 240 apiece (an outrageous price), but with a change to mass oriented marketing, last month the price was revised to Rs.125.

Gillette has come with the most preposterous advertising campaign, to sell this. So what does this campaign consist of? Well initially it was just women they interviewed; asked the same questions and got almost the same replies. The ludicrous part is that the idea is not only coarse but also very hollow. What kind of creative, convincing, enchanting answer do you expect normal people to give to “Why do you think men should be clean shaved?” And the authoritative repetitiveness, with which this question is asked it, seems like it is one of the most pertinent question facing modern India.

 

Some of the lines uttered during these teaser campaigns “Yah the stubble is out of fashion, Men need to look just like us women (all most)… clean and well groomed. Shaved men look nice. Women deserve better looking men. Let me tell you guys out there how much women love shaved clean skin.”

And then if those interviews weren’t enough they roped in luscious bollywood stars Minisha Lamba, Mogdha Godsey and Neha Dhupia .

These initial teaser campaigns were still tolerable, but last weekend it translated to something uglier. One of our Prime English news channels CNN-IBN, usually concerned with providing us trenchant news, feed us with almost half an hour of a ‘TV sponsored featured presentation’ of this marketing campaign.

In the studio there was model Debi Dutta (seen in the Thumps up add.) along with hair stylist Javed Habib, and another female make up expert from Mumbai. All of them were harping on the same thing: ‘Men please shave’. Not to forget, the anchor for some reason had an uncanny American accent (I guess that is considered really meritorious when selling products through such slimy campaigns). Add to that Datta, was befitted with the honorary title of being the president of WALS. This dismaying term means ‘Women’s against lazy stubble’.

Javed (the professional) made what seemed to be an initial blip, when he mentioned that there is no harm keeping a beard, or stubble. Then he made an about turn, that “do so only in the case of a cut or rash on your face”, otherwise… otherwise it is almost evil, and you would look primitive (yah that was the tone in their voices).

Later, one of the speakers uttered these absurd lines by which you can get a feel of what I am talking about. “Men are being selfish they don’t care about what we want they just care about what they want. It’s a mixture of men being lazy and them not caring about the women’s opinion. It’s about time every girl/women stood up and took an oath and against this.” It would be better if these people use a similar diatribe to usher something more fruitful, probably more on the lines of some feminist movement.

And finally there was the slogan, for which they had rehearsed all this drama  “So Please go out there and get yourself a Gillette Mach 3  its out in the ,market ,it is now more affordable”.

This featured presentation also contained a made-up (off course because it is meant to be it is an add.) clipping of how girlfriend insists her boyfriend on shaving before going to a movie. Apart from that there were the same opinions, lame lines enunciated countless times.

It seems that a similar but low key campaign was carried out last year as well. The conclusions of the survey by Gillette done then were, ‘Clean shaven men are more acceptable to society and more loved by women’.

I understand network 18’s financial considerations, in such cases. But then you can’t feed the audience with mindless information in the guise of news especially on a coveted news channel. It is not only ethically outrageous, but even from what bit of marketing I have studied it is also a bad marketing decision.

 

[Great men who have found inspiration and love because of their facial hair. (from top)Karl Marx , the Father of Communism, immortalized as much for his beard as for his theories. General Ambrose Burnside( the Father of sideburns) Santa Clause( always loved & told apart because of his beard)]

A similar form of this, ‘paid content advertising’ has been thriving for quite some time in the print industry.  It is a known fact that many media groups especially the Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd. (BCCL), have floated businesses which provide services of displaying promotional content in the form of articles and even as a part of the editorial. Although it is debatable whether such content should be allowed to be placed in the form of news for both news papers and TV (now).However, an incontestable requirement is that they should be ‘marked’ in the case. So there is my question to the Network 18 group. Why barring the initial period, was there no message ticker/ bar corresponding this to be a featured presentation?

   Some might argue that this kind of healthy capitalist TV advertising     campaigns give you more choices and it’s up to an individual; indicating, I could have opted not to watch that channel at that time, or a step further I could have (as I already have) chucked the Gillette. I simply say, isn’t it a stupid idea to tell people that you need to shave because you will look good that way.

Since the past one year I have been observing odious advertising campaigns for consumer goods, especially Deodorants and sprays. There is absolute lack of creativity, and all the so called creativity that is there is lost in making sleazy sequences. But somehow I had tolerated watching, or should I say, skipping these kind of adds.  However now, I am left aghast at the new lows these campaigns have touched, with this Gillette ad series. Why do we need to bring just women models, to bombard you with their pleading voices to shave or to do other things? Everyone knows sex sells, but what everyone seems to have forgotten here is that it’s not just Sex that sells.

It would have been any day better for a major company like P&G to go without earning some profits instead of torturing us with an atrocious product selling campaign. After being sickened seeing this campaign, I am going to chuck my Mach- 3, which I have been using since the past one year and visit the old city to buy the good old knife-like single blade, and shave the Grandfather way!. Down with such devious advertising campaigns….