Out-Caring The Competition Using Video

Gillette – “We Believe: The Best a Man Can Be”

A while ago, I was preparing a workshop, for which I typically use videos. For one particular workshop in Saskatoon, I included this Gillette video, and played it as if it were any other clip. What happened was very unexpected. In a room full of women, I glanced over at the one burly man in the room, who was wiping tears away from his eyes. It hit him. The video really hit him.

Whatever your views on men and women, videos like this create an impact. Specially for a brand that sells in large part to an all male audience. What a courageous endeavour for Gillette. Now, it didn’t come without a lot of negative feedback, but any “right” opinion of how we view ourselves is bound to get pushback. That’s why we need to be fighting this fight.

I used to only use funny videos in presentations and workshops. Funny videos are great! They get the crowd into it, they make you happy and they’re easy to share after. Funny videos are great for presentations. Yet, emotional videos do something else. They pull on your heart strings. They make you think, even sometimes cry.

I like this new trend of emotional videos. I think it’s easy to put a funny bit together and film it. It’s much more difficult to write a script about brotherly love and film it in a way that fools you into thinking both brothers are still alive.