Charlie’s Angels star Farrah Fawcett smears Noxzema shave cream on football player Joe Namath’s face in a 1973 Super Bowl commercial.

The advertisement was spewing sexualization as Namath closed the commercial by complimenting Fawcett saying, “You have a great pair of hands.” Fifty years ago, shaving ads were surrounded by key themes of sexual innuendo. Sex sold better than anything else.

In 2019, however, this most certainly is not the case. Advertisements today often are more social commentary than selling a product. In Gillette’s newest and most impressive initiative, they released “The Best Men Can Be” campaign on Monday. In essence, the company is expressing how men should take a long hard look in the mirror when they shave–not to avoid nicks and cuts, but to evaluate their own lives. Although there has been an extreme amount of debate and backlash with this new campaign, this ad is definitely the most important to the overall message that our generation is trying to convey, which is more support and awareness to the treatment and respect of others by men that have caused uproar in our society and sparked movements such as #MeToo.

Plenty of figures with large influence over the social media world are commenting on the uproar, such as Piers Morgan’s dreadful tweet reading: “Let’s be clear: @gillette now wants every man to take one of their razors & cut off his testicles.”.

It is clear that Morgan let his ignorance cloud his judgement, causing him to completely miss the concept that Gillette was trying to convey. The purpose was not to attack and belittle men, but to create a platform for their support to the improvements of men in today’s world.

Now we know that the majority might be arguing that Gillette is framing men of awful and terrible behavior and it is all because of feminism and the #MeToo movement, blah blah blah. This is not the case. There is not one time in the ad where Gillette conveys its message to paint the male gender as how it is being interpreted, negatively. Gillette only uses proactive words of improvement to encourage a change in the form of actions from the male gender.

This advertisement sends a powerful message to millenials by taking a stand. Nowadays, millenials are searching for purpose-driven brands and they are now shopping with their hearts as well as their minds. And while possibly alienating a small fraction of conservative, traditional millennials, this ad speaks to the majority of their generation and even younger men who want an easy way to support change.

Ultimately this ad’s purpose was to cut through the messiness of social uproars in the media and create conversation. Over the past week, the Gillette commercial has done that and more. Whether you agree with the campaign or not, you have most likely heard about it at work, lunch, home, talk-shows, the news and more. This is all about occurrence and reach toward the media and Gillette has achieved this in a socially appropriate and meaningful way.

A pat on the back to Gillette for its intuition and support for the most important topic of our generation.