P&G, Dial, Unilever Target the Middle Man

Packaged goods companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Dial have identified the next hot demographic in male grooming: Men who are interested in a more clean-cut appearance, but aren’t taking the idea to the extreme. Or, as Glenn Williams, a P&G rep, put it: Someone who falls between “metrosexual and Neanderthal.”

Various factors converged to create this new man. The advent of the “metrosexual”—a term first coined by British journalist Mark Simpson in the 1990s—opened the door for marketing previously women-only products like lip balms, conditioners and moisturizers to men, even though the new demo was somewhat overhyped.

“The metrosexual was never as true as we, a manufacturing class, wanted it to be,” said David Rubin, Unilever’s U.S.