Thinks Like A P&G Woman

It was the twenty-sixth of June when the news arrived.

Someone, without knowing him, had shared his position. Had decided to appoint a woman as CEO of Gillette. A woman of Portuguese Brazilian origins. A singular event across one hundred and thirty years of Gillette’s history.

There was nothing to note. No comment to make. Only to wait. And to trust.

Her decisions would come first from instinct and intuition, and then from that rational, emotional logic that women do not explain. They live it.

She represents, officially: the best a man can get. Not inside a blade, but in being shaped, chosen, tested, understood completely. And in deciding, every morning, why it matters to persevere with that ritual.

The Gillette man exists because a woman defined what a man should be. Not by force. But by her presence. By the silent authority of someone who knows how to distinguish between appearance and character. She is the standard the blade has always tried to reach.

The Three Women Behind Every Gillette Man

Behind the Gillette man, there is not one woman. There are three. And every man who has ever held a blade carries all three with him.

The woman who taught him.

His mother. His grandmother. The first woman who placed a blade in his hand and said, with or without words, that this is what a man does to prepare himself for the world. She did not teach him technique. She taught him intention. The ritual was hers before it was ever his.

The woman who watches.

His companion. His wife. The woman who notices whether he has shaved or not, not because she is checking, but because she sees him. Her gaze is the only one that measures the distance between the man he is and the man he wants to be. She never says a word. There is no need. The blade already knows.

The woman who decides.

The woman at the moment of purchase. For fifty years of Gillette’s presence on the market, most blades bought in American homes were purchased by women. She chose the brand. She chose the product. She decided what precision meant for the man in her life. The marketing was aimed at him. The decision was always hers.

To close, a gift to the Brazilian woman who now leads Gillette. From the last link in the chain, though it all depends on where one chooses to see the beginning.

Glory and strength back to Mother Gillette. And with this, a structural truth turned into a slogan. A gift that a mother would appreciate from one of her daughters:

The Gillette Man. Only the Best of Women.