How to know if your study should be posted.

mhandanna · 2021-05-05T14:22:32+00:00

How to talk about men

1. WHAT PROBLEM ARE YOU’RE TRYING TO SOLVE?

When working to address the social issues that men and boys face, it is vital that we are clear and transparent about the problem we are seeking to solve.

As a business, the primary problem Gillette is trying to solve is how to sell more products. In order to do this, Gillette has chosen to tie its brand to some of the social issues that are linked to gender.

When people think about men and gender issues, they tend to do so in one of two ways:

They look at the social problems men cause
They look at the social problems men have

Furthermore, there is a tendency when focusing on the “social problems men cause” to position all men as being responsible for these problems. The combination of these two choices – the choice to overlook the “social problems men have” and the choice to make all men responsible for the “social problems men cause” – is a choice that inevitably limits the range of men the advert will resonate with.

The message this approach sends to some men is that we’re not interested in the problems you face personally as a man, but we do expect you to take personal responsibility for the problems other men cause.

For other men, the message that there is something you personally can do to help solve the problems other men cause, will be welcomed. The result, for Gillette, is that it has pleased some of its target audience but alienated others (and generated vast quantities of free publicity in the process). Whether this helps or hinders its quest to sell more razors remains to be seen.

The lesson here, for those wanting to reach out to men, is that it’s important to frame the gender issues you are seeking to resolve, in ways that are relevant to and resonate with the men you want to reach.

2. WHO ARE YOU TALKING TO: SOME MEN? MOST MEN? ALL MEN?

There are more than 10 million men and boys in Australia (and close to 4 billion worldwide). Each one of us is a unique individual and so any attempt to communicate with all men and boys as a group, will inevitably fall short.

Yet mass communication is an essential part of health promotion. So how do can we draw on masculine archetypes to help us reach the majority of men, without resorting to lazy gender stereotypes or attempting to include everyone (and ending up pleasing no-one)?

Gillette has clearly attempted to move away from the classic, hero archetype that male grooming brands have been promoting since the 1990s: muscular, metrosexual, perfectly groomed and attractive to women.

Instead, it presents us with the classic 21st Century trio of progressive masculine archetypes: the Bad Bro; the Good Bro and the Bystander Bro.

The Good Bro is the progressive male hero, no longer defined by his looks. What defines the Good Bro, is not cultivating the right body or perfect looks, but adopting the correct political attitudes and behaviours. As Gillette’s new advert states, good men are those who “say the right thing” and “act the right way”.

In contrast, the Bad Bro is a stereotypical representation of masculinity at its worse: sexist, racist, homophobic and violent. Some commentators have claimed that Gillette is presenting the majority of men as evil, while others have countered that it presents men in a positive light, but the reality is more nuanced.

Gillette presents the archetypical bloke as a row of brainwashed bystanders, lined up behind BBQs with their arms folded. These everyday blokes are neither Good Bros nor Bad Bros, they are complicit Bystander Bros, unconsciously repeating the mantra, “boys will be boys”.

Gillette is unequivocal here, the majority of men are not Good Bros – “some already are in ways big and small, but some is not enough”. When you study the ad closely, the message to men is clear and deliberate, some men are Good Bros, but most men are not, so men need to change.

In any communication campaign targeting men, it will always be impossible to create messages that are relevant to all men. There will also be times when it is necessary to narrow your campaign to try and connect more effectively with specific communities of men (younger men, older, gay men, Indigenous men and so on).

But for people who are trying to reach most men, it is vital to carefully consider what message you are sending out to (and about) the majority of men. If you want to build trust and an ongoing relationship with most men, then it probably doesn’t work to start that process by effectively saying that most men are a problem.

Title	How to know if your study should be posted.
Author	UnHope20
Upvotes	3
Comments	2
Date	March 1, 2021 12:30 PM UTC (5 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/Male_Studies
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/Male_Studies/comments/lv80qw/how_to_know_if_your_study_should_be_posted/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/Male_Studies/how-to-know-if-your-study-should-be-posted.1216452 https://theredarchive.com/post/1216452

Comments