Brand and Butter
The straight-talking branding podcast for leaders who refuse to settle.
Brand and Butter delivers no-BS advice on how psychology, strategy, and design create brands that work. Host Tara Ladd, founder of Your One & Only brand design studio, breaks down the real influence and power of branding – how understanding behaviour and cultural shifts can transform how people see, think, and choose.
Sometimes funny, always honest, never dull. This is the podcast that cuts through industry jargon to talk about what actually makes brands stick.
Tara Ladd is the founder of Your One and Only, who design brands that breathe with culture through psychology, strategy, and design.
Brand and Butter
When Gillette Called Out Toxic Behaviour, Society Wasn't Ready
What role should brands play in addressing harmful narratives? In this case toxic masculinity and intimate partner violence. This question sits at the heart of this episode examining the intersection of brand responsibility and social change.
Recent world-first Australian research revealed that approximately 120,000 Australian men report using intimate partner violence annually. This data validates what Gillette, in their controversial 2019 advertisement, attempted to address years ago. The backlash against Gillette's campaign highlights our collective discomfort with confronting deeply embedded social narratives around masculinity.
This episode challenges marketers to consider their responsibility in cultural storytelling. Are we perpetuating harmful stereotypes or helping reshape narratives that benefit everyone? How might your brand contribute to positive change while staying authentic to your values? The answer might determine not just your relationship with consumers, but your place in shaping a healthier society.
See the Gillette ad here.
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Before we start this episode, I just want to say that the conversation is around sensitive topics that relate to domestic violence and suicide. You're listening to Brand and Butter, a straight-talking, occasionally in-your-face, no-bs, branding podcast for modern marketers and business owners. Business owners here for those who want to understand the influence and power of branding and how pairing associations, consumer behavior and design thinking can impact what people see, think and feel. I'm your host, tara Ladd, the sometimes funny, sometimes vulnerable and often unapologetically blunt founder and creative director of brand and design agency your one and only of brand and design agency your one and only. Hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Brand and Butter. This one is super impromptu, like I've been talking about this conversation yesterday and today and I was like this is a conversation for the podcast this week, so I am bringing it here Now.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure if you're aware, but especially in Australia, there has been reports now across media where a world first research on intimate partner violence from the Australian Institute of Family Studies called Tentmen and it highlights a nationwide increase of intimate partner violence as well as ways to tackle the problem, and in it it basically found that after 120, I'm trying to read something here, so I've got my stats correct. Around 120,000 Australian men stated that they used intimate partner violence each year On average. The emotional type of abuse was 32% by 2022, was the most common form of violence used. Then it was followed by physical violence at 9% in 2022 and sexual abuse, 2% by 2013-14. And so they were asked with a series of questions of have you ever behaved in a manner that has made a partner feel frightened or anxious, which is emotional type of abuse? Have you ever hit, slapped, kicked or otherwise physically hurt a partner when you were angry? Physical violence. And then, obviously, they had said that men with depressive symptoms who had reported suicide related experiences between 2013 and 14 were more likely to have started using intimate partner violence by 2022. And also by 2022, that 25% of men reported ever using and experiencing intimate partner violence, which is more than twice the proportion who reported ever using violence but never experiencing it, which says 10%. Now I'm reading this off the Women's Agenda Report. And they also stated that men with higher levels of social support in 2013 and 14 were 26% less likely to start using by 2022 compared to men with lower levels of social support. They also said, which is even more significant, that men who strongly agreed that they received affection from a father or father figure during childhood were 48% less likely to ever use intimate partner violence, compared to men who strongly disagreed.
Speaker 1:The importance of this, and why I started to bring these stats up, is that in 2019, gillette put out an ad, and I talk about the Gillette ad quite a lot because it's something that leaves rent free in my head. Now these conversations are something that I am very much involved with on my personal page. I am all about behavior, ideologies, belief systems and how our exposure to certain things shape our behavior. Obviously, it's something I'm studying, I will continue to study and I am looking into a degree at the moment which, to be honest, is quite overwhelming, but it's something that I'm just really, really passionate about.
Speaker 1:Gillette actually tackled this subject six years ago and it was met with wide, wide backlash like wide what do you call it? Wide stream backlash. A lot of men poo-pooed it. They did not want to hear about it. They were saying why are brands getting involved in in these conversations? And I'm always of a type to say that if your, if your brand has a platform and you can bring good change, have at it. Of course there's going to be backlash, and this is the thing with even as a small business is fear. It's fear of what can happen, fear of, and I think that if you're doing something that genuinely aligns to good change, then if you have the gumption to be able to do it, and not necessarily the gumption because there's obviously more at risk in certain instances. But if you're looking at it in the case of Procter Gamble, who own Gillette, they had some leeway right. They've got obviously many other brands that they can use to fall back on. However, bigger brand, obviously bigger reputation. But this is also brand equity. So here's a conversation of brand story, right, brand narrative, the conversations that you bring to the table as a brand. So they did this ad.
Speaker 1:This ad is all about toxic masculinity. If you Google Gillette, toxic masculinity I'll put the link in the show notes so that you can see it. But it basically talks about these micro behaviors that society just has let slipped and let slip, sorry, over the duration of all of our lives, and these have compacted or, you know, built up to become these much bigger issues. And so what we're seeing here is the rise of, you know, the patriarchal narrative of what masculinity has been represented, or what represents masculinity to the patriarchal system. Now, patriarchy for those at home going oh, here she is waving a feminist flag. It's a system. The system also impacts men just as much as it impacts women, and we look at this in the term. This is an exact example of that Men not having the right to be able to take leave because they're not seen as primary caregivers. Men being poo-pooed because you know, or dismissed because they don't have you know, they're not the woman of the household.
Speaker 1:I spoke to one of my friends about this in regards to picking up an application for their child at daycare and they said give this to mom. It's, it's. It's rampant everywhere. It's not just men, it is women as well that contribute to this. But what I'm talking about in this instance is the role of the patriarchal narrative on masculinity and what masculinity means. Now I've had these conversations with some of my friends at the moment. One slipped in and was like this is my stance on it and I said yes, but this is your preconceived idea of what masculinity means. Masculinity has been built up to represent, you know, macho, strong, don't cry, we're not weak. All of these things that we've been trying to unravel over the last few years and how these play a huge role in how we perceive things as an audience.
Speaker 1:As brands, it is our responsibility to be very aware of the conversations that we are leading with our content. You can be a small brand and you can be a large brand, but you have just as much persuasive pull as the next brand, especially considering a lot of smaller brands have bigger communities and the larger brands have bigger platforms. So this ad got absolutely slammed by so many and I would say loud vocalist men. There were a lot of women that came to the defense. I came to its defense and then obviously the brigade comes in and you get slammed for it. But that's the thing and why people will stay silent. When there is not an army behind them to back them up, they will stay silent. We have seen this before with victims in the past. Why is this tied to brand? Because it is deeply aligned to societal narrative.
Speaker 1:Brands are in alignment to the cultural conversation that we have. When you say I am trying to stay on trend, that's staying on trend with a cultural value or a cultural narrative. Societal conversations that we're having right now. People don't see the nuance of that they only see top level of. I'm going to find a trending audio. It's trending audio because it's part of pop culture.
Speaker 1:These things are so aligned to what we do, and if you want real emotional pull, then you have to have conversations that will drive home a message. We've seen this happen on the counter as well, where someone will say something that they agree with, and it's obviously in the vast majority of. You know, people may not agree with it, but you just have to be willing to. You know, take that hit. But when it comes to something like this in my, in my opinion, you're talking about violence, family violence. You're talking about the role of how we're shaping kids to grow up, to be, to be strong, healthy men, and what we've permitted in the past is allowing men to have the feeling of anger, and that was the only emotion that they were allowed to have, and not allowed to cry, not allowed to vet, vent their frustrations. They were considered weak.
Speaker 1:All of these messages have drilled in over time. It's the same as beauty messages for women, but these conversations are conversations that we need men to be having, because women have been having these conversations with each other, as we always have, because they've got that social support that hasn't been seen as frequently in men. We're seeing it more and more now, which is great, but it hasn't happened. And even that stat right there that said, 48% are less likely to ever use family violence compared to men who strongly disagreed with those that were hugged as a child, essentially from their father. So what we actually need to be doing is changing the narrative of how men are seen on screen. What's what positive masculinity looks like? Because the way that we actually consume things is 90% subconsciously done. It's like it's our unconscious mind that shapes our decisions. 90% of our decisions are made unconsciously, which means that that comes from things that we've seen and belief systems and all of these things that are around us, who we hang around, the conversations that are on the reg. This is why it's sorry, in my personal opinion, to get political. I think it's so problematic to have Donald Trump as president of the United States and all of those people that are up there at the moment in any area of leadership, because the conversation and the narrative that they have got buckled down and going out on a mainstream is deeply problematic, deeply, deeply problematic, and if anyone has studied behavior, you would be all across this stuff. Anyone that's in that space would just be freaking out right now.
Speaker 1:But another great book that I've always really liked is the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and they were talking about the bystanders effect, and so essentially, there was a woman being murdered in I think it was Queens in New York and there was a whole apartment blocked just watching it happen. But nobody called the police not a person, not a single person because everyone thought someone else was going to do it, and that's the thing is that most people just wait for someone else to do it. I saw a really good stat the other day, or a conversation that was by a psychologist, on Instagram. If I find it I'll have to share it, but I don't have it on hand. Where they spoke about it was like the rule of three, so it was once they saw the third person do something that everyone else came in.
Speaker 1:So the video was actually of a man holding up a fence that was falling down at a festival. So there was a ride that you know, something was going on with the ride and he was holding the fence so that this ride could continue to move without breaking, and like people were watching and then someone else runs over to help him and there's two people holding this, this wall, and then finally a third person comes over and holds the wall and then a mass group of people run over. So it was almost like the rule of three. And to show that again, there was a guy dancing on the hill at a festival, like they're all sitting down on the hill, and he was dancing, living his best life, and then a girl gets up and she dances with him and then all of a sudden, another guy gets up and dances with him and then everyone gets up. And it was really interesting to watch this. It's kind of like that you see someone do good, you do good, you see someone do bad. It gives someone permission to be able to continue to do that bad and it is a direct correlation, I believe. I honestly believe.
Speaker 1:When that ad came out, I was all for it. I was like this is an amazing piece of creative work and I cannot understand the backlash and I still stand by JAG right, everyone was like you know it's bad, they've wrecked their loyalty. And look, there are good and bads to the Jaguar campaign, but we're never going to know whether that worked. People will say it failed. They've got a new ad agency. We're never going to know it worked, because they never actually sold the product. It would have been answered by who we knew bought the car, but the car was never up for sale. So we're never actually going to know the impact of what that ad did, because the sales were never in correlation. It's always going to be a show of how many people were going to buy this product. That's how you know if an ad worked. It's like the result. But the result never happened. They only went by conversation and we know this from past elections. It's like people can talk a big game and the big, loud majority are sometimes never the one that wins. It's some silent majority.
Speaker 1:And we see this through this ad and we're looking at like, if you were to do a comparison of consumer, the primary consumer of the household is usually the women, and when we're looking at it in regards to how someone would buy a product, we may be targeting a man's product to the world, but it might be the woman that's actually buying the product. And so you looking at it like look at Old Spice, for instance. They rebranded back in 2012, 2010, somewhere around then, but they went from old, traditional, masculine, you know branding and completely shifted it to target women, and it was like I'm on a horse, I'm the man your man wishes he could be, or something like that. Whatever it was, it was hilarious, it was great, it was done with humor, it was done with, you know, a bit of a joke and they completely switched it. This is a male product, but we're targeting women because we know that women buy this product and it's the same when you look at Chanel or any kind of perfume like that, like they use women that are in these like sensual positions because ideally, that's for the male gaze. They're targeting men because they know that men are more likely to buy the perfume for their women or their female partners, and this is something that we need to look at. Like it is what's the message and who are we actually targeting here?
Speaker 1:Because I can tell you right now I have these discussions with my husband and my kids. My kids are young. They're my my oldest is six in July. My, my uh, youngest is three and a half, four in September, and we look at this from a micro level. What are the micro behaviors that we're showing at home and what are we letting them watch on TV and what books are we allowing them to read? Like all of these things are shaping their mindset. Like who are they hanging around? What conversations are we having? I had this conversation with my my eldest the other day at school. He was joking and saying oh, we were picking on one of the girls at school and I said why were you doing that? He's like I don't know. I said why do you think that that's okay? And, to be fair, I would have done this the other way around, and which I did, because something else happened a couple of days later.
Speaker 1:But it is calling out that action at such a micro level. The problem is we've not been calling this out. The things of boys will be boys. They're just kids. Allow them to be able to do that. Have ricocheted these micro behaviors into larger behaviors without a stepping stone.
Speaker 1:So in Tipping Point they talk about the train system and that is the ticketing system. So you get on the train and you buy a ticket that's there to enforce rule, because if the rules at a smaller level are broken, it allows a much bigger law to be broken. So you know, getting on the train or like, you get in trouble for doing something minute, it sets a precedent that you get a harsher punishment for when you do something worse. But if the harsher punishment starts at the smaller punishment like the harsher penalty starts at a smaller penalty, if that makes sense, how am I trying to phrase this? Let's recalibrate. If they're not being punished for the smaller thing that they've done, then the larger thing that they do, they get away with all of these behaviors and it's a minor punishment for a much bigger problem. And this is the beginning of the issue. We need to be addressing the smaller issues at the minute level and it's going to be an evolution thing. This is not something that we will eliminate now. This is something that we need to be having a conversation towards and working towards eradicating a problem, and brands have a huge role here.
Speaker 1:We have so much content going out on a daily basis. What are we saying? Who are we including in the ad? What language are we using? How are we learning to make this better? Is it ableist? Are we being inclusive? And this is why it's so dangerous in the States at the moment that they're eliminating DEI.
Speaker 1:Now, I had this conversation at a speaking event that I did yesterday and we spoke about DEI and one of the women there said what is DEI? And I was like, oh my God, here I am just rambling on about DEI, assuming that everyone knows what DEI means. Dei is diversity, equity and inclusion, and this is important because we have biases. So merit? Sure, in a beautiful world, we would love people to be chosen by merit. However, unfortunately, there are unconscious biases at play that allow people to be racist, to be sexist, to be homophobes, to be all of these things that allow an unconscious bias to play. Before merit even comes to the table, there are judgments that are made, which is why they say don't judge a book by its cover. That has been completely thrown out the window.
Speaker 1:There is a study that's been done by shapings of the face. It's like a line drawing and people will judge whether a person is more scary, more friendly, based on our facial behaviors. A person is more scary, more friendly based on our facial behaviors, and it obviously got worse when we were talking about skin color. This was really interesting when they did a study on children and I did it to mine and I was like my mind was blown by how they shape movies and TV series, and this is where it all really gets nuanced.
Speaker 1:Because if in every movie you see one tokenistic African-American or person of color and the vast majority of everything else is white, then they're going to assume that they are the minority, obviously. And then if there is a bad guy in a movie, who does that usually? Who does that usually? Well, who is that usually, I should say, and what role are they playing? We know that cultural alignments and world issues always come out on screen. Who are the bad guys? In American movies? We've seen Germans be bad guys, russians are bad guys, middle Eastern are bad guys, and it always comes down to the conversations that are happening in real time.
Speaker 1:None of these are fabricated, you know and it's very rare that you know that that they would. You would see it a bad Australian in an American ad. And if you do it's. You know it's not common that there is a very big stereotype there. So these things are so minute.
Speaker 1:But the problem is that we assume that it isn't an issue. Most people just go no, this isn't an issue. That's because a lot of people don't want to be facing the problem. There is a big problem and they're at the very, very bottom of that is an equity, and when people say that they want to choose by merit. Unfortunately, even to get an interview, you need to pass a resume through to that company and I can tell you right now if your name has 10 letters or you are from an Indian background or whatever, there would be racism involved unconsciously through that process. It is why people change their names when they come to a Western country. They shouldn't have to, but they do, and this is what we're looking at at such a base level that people assume that we're just not like that, when there is so much evidence that proves otherwise. We're watching this play out right now. It's almost like what's happening in society right now is giving people permission to be their true selves, and it is really coming out.
Speaker 1:So these reports that we're finding from family violence and from racism and basic bigotry across the board comes from belief systems. It comes from the institutions and brands and it comes from TV shows and books that we read and micro communities that you're part of siloed echo chambers, traditional media. This is why we're seeing such a vast change in the way that people are behaving, because of the adaptation of technology, but also the access of information to people, both good and bad. This is why fact checking needs to be back in. On meta, I hate the fact that they've taken that away, but a fact is a fact. It's not a restriction of free speech. It is a fact and you cannot just go and say I want to be a free racist in the conversations that I'm having, because that's just simply bullshit.
Speaker 1:I am very open with my values on on becoming a better person and even now I was having a conversation with my friend yesterday on what we used to say as kids because it was just, it was such, you know, part of the common culture and I'm like, oh my gosh, like the way that we used to say things. And it is not about who you were you don't have to defend who you were but it is about who you become and I think that as brands, we have a responsibility. I will always look into the conversations that I have, try to make it more inclusive. If someone calls me out for something, I will try and reframe it. But it isn't about the conversation of. You know, we're just making someone feel bad. It's putting the conversation to the table. Are we ready to have it? I don't think a lot of people are, but it's going to really expose a lot of internal biases that we have that people don't realize.
Speaker 1:When I studied behavior, it really opened my eyes to a lot of things. If you are a naturally trusting, nice person, you'll be taken for a ride because you'll be very surprised to see how some people don't think the same way and it's yeah. This is why I don't agree with um countries being run by like businesses, because unfortunately we're at end stage capitalism where there is greed and corruption and at the expense of other people, and there needs to be balance. Like everything, there needs to be balanced. We need to have the conversation we need our boys to be, to be raised strong, with men that feel comfortable in their own skin, that feel able to be themselves without harsh judgment. We need women to be able to step up into places without being, you know, cast, you know outsiders, or being reprimanded for stepping outside of traditional norms. These are the things that are happening at the moment and it's so nuanced and it's why we're all picking and choosing and value aligning to different things and it feels really awkward.
Speaker 1:We're at this pivotal moment in society where there's some big structural changes happening and I think that Gillette just happened to be a brand that brought the toxic masculinity narrative to the table at a time when people weren't ready to have it, and it is a direct knock-on effect, as I've said in my keynote that I've been doing lately, which is the new consumer brand, beyond the brand identity culture and the new consumer and I talk specifically to three core areas that have happened in the past decade the Me Too movement, the George Floyd murder and the pandemic. These three things have vastly impacted the way that we are in our society, how we behave and how we respond, and it's obviously been before that, but these are big, pivotal moments that have happened. So, yeah, I challenge everyone to go and watch that out again and see if your perception of it has changed. But, yeah, that's it for this week. I'm always up for these conversations. I'm up for big, meaty, in-depth conversations, and this is essentially brand at its core. It's identity alignment, not just as a business, but identity alignment as who we are as people. So it's always about being challenged and it's about being ready to have that conversation. So that's it for this week and I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1:Did you like that episode? I hope so, because if you did, why don't you head over to whatever platform you listen on and rate and review? It's much appreciated and helps others know what we're about. If you want to follow us, you can find us at youwantanonly underscore au.
