Football focus helps bring in young customers for Gillette
Following Gillette’s exploration of toxic masculinity in its successful — if controversial — advert that aired in January last year titled The Best a Man Can Be, the shaving brand has launched a new campaign entitled Made of What Matters.
This time around, the brand’s advert, featuring Manchester City and England footballer Raheem Sterling, looks at prejudice in the sport — a topic that Sterling has been vocal about in the past — and advocates people working together to address it.
YouGov Plan and Track data shows that since the advert’s release on 6 February, Gillette’s Buzz score has risen sharply.
This is especially true among men aged 18 to 34, where the brand’s Buzz score peaked at 11.6, increasing by 9.6 points since the advert first aired.
It was a similar story among men of other age groups — scores for those aged 35 to 49 reached a high of 10.4 (up 5.3 points), while Buzz among those aged 50 and over hit 6.7 (an improvement of 3.9).
Following the firm’s The Best a Man Can Be campaign in January 2019, men between 18 and 34 were most likely to have heard something negative about the brand.
However, this time around sees younger men as most likely to
have heard something positive about the brand.
This could be in part due the influence of Raheem Sterling, as YouGov Rating data shows that millennials are the most likely age group to carry a positive opinion of the footballer (39 per cent) say they have a positive opinion of him compared to other age groups.
This influence could pay off as our Purchase Intent data (which shows which brand is someone’s first choice to buy) finds that Gillette has become the number one health and beauty brand among 18- to 34-year-old men (up from the 12th spot in the two weeks before the advert aired).
Since the adverts release the brand’s Purchase Intent score has jumped by 11.7 points among men aged 18 to 34, from 2.6 to 14.3 — meaning nearly one in six young men now say Gillette is their first choice product in the sector.
Our data suggests that Gillette’s switch in focus, as well as popular celebrity backing, may have helped the brand to boost in its Purchase Intent scores as it did with its last advert, but this time around also generated a sharp increase in positive Buzz.
Stephan Shakespeare is chief executive at YouGov