“To create loving men, we must love males.”

— Bell Hooks

When I heard we were hosting an event, ‘Marketing Meets The Manosphere’, I imagined how we might position protein powder or crypto courses to Andrew Tate followers.

This felt like a task I didn’t want to undertake.

Some audiences perhaps shouldn’t be marketed to, if it means I have to exercise empathy towards views I would rather not.

But in my refusal to take these men seriously – not their answers to life, but their underlying experiences and concerns – I realise a gap in empathy.

We’re an industry that prides itself on empathy. On understanding. On listening first. Empathy provides us with raw material for imagination. The very spark that keeps our work human.

Yet understanding men hasn’t been a priority.

Why? Perhaps it’s a fear that showing empathy for men risks diminishing progress for women. As if empathy were a limited resource. And it’s appealing to the progressive mindset to back causes not your own, to acknowledge privilege by uplifting others.

But this can inadvertently create a blind spot, where addressing male needs feels like a step backward.

What we end up with is a distinct lack of nuanced, affirming male stories – not just in advertising, but in culture more broadly.

Media and marketing have rightly made efforts in recent years to centre historically marginalised groups. But in doing so can situate white and male as default – not to be examined critically or compassionately.

Meanwhile, men – especially young men – are struggling. Young men are growing up in a world that sees them as privileged – but many don’t feel it. They’re struggling in education, struggling with loneliness, struggling to feel useful. They’re being told they’re powerful and fragile at the same time.

And in the absence of meaningful attention, a vacuum of empathetic guidance has formed. This void is now being filled by alternative voices who, for all their controversy, at least claim to know what men need and where they can find connection.

So where does that leave us? Can we only love men by loving less elsewhere? Or is there another way — one that allows for more room, more humanity, and much better stories? 

Because if we don’t tell those stories, we’ve missed the most human part of our job: to listen, to empathise, to connect.

Who’s loving men now?

When a vacuum of credible, empathetic guidance exists, it will inevitably be filled. And it has been – by the loudest and most willing to claim they have the answers. 

Mainstream narratives often treat the manosphere as a homogenous group defined entirely by extremism, misogyny, and grievance. While much of it absolutely deserves critique, this view risks turning us off from listening to the men drawn to these spaces.

What if the problem isn’t extremism, but emptiness? And the struggles men face have created a void that these platforms are simply filling, because they offer a sense of belonging or answers mainstream culture doesn't.

As Simon Copland, sociologist and author of The Male Complaint: The Manosphere and Misogyny Online notes, “we have no real data on how many boys engage in these channels, what groups they may align to, or even good data on the spread of misogynistic ideas, particularly compared to other time frames.”

What if, in our rush to condemn the worst of the manosphere, we flatten an entire audience into a caricature, missing the real struggles that lead some to these spaces in the first place.

As Copland goes on to say, making it seem like the Manosphere is an aberration outside of mainstream society “allows us to ignore the very real and underlying social and economic factors that have given rise to it.”

When young men see mainstream media (and by extension, marketing) dismiss all men’s spaces as toxic, they feel misrepresented, misunderstood. And they stop listening.

If we want to connect with men we need to speak to them with empathy not judgement.

We saw what happens when you don’t: Gillette’s “The Best A Man Can Be”, tried to confront toxic masculinity. It focussed on the problems men cause, but ignored the problems men face. Instead of reflection, it sparked defensiveness.

We’ve told better stories before

There is a path forward; our industry has already proven it. By digging into deeper, unspoken truths, and finding beauty in the complex realities of human experience. We've shown we know how to do this better; we did it for women. 

Brands have learned a lot in the past decade on how to speak to women’s complex experiences – often beautifully and with empathy. We’ve shown we can tackle sensitive issues with nuance – when you care enough to try. This wasn’t just about ‘doing good’; it was about unearthing deeper truths that unlocked powerful ideas, broke through the clutter and transformed categories.

Body Form leaned into the messy, unspoken realities of womanhood, and found an untapped emotional territory that competitors were too squeamish to touch.

Instead of generic empowerment, Always pinpointed exactly when and why girls lose confidence – the transition into adolescence. By speaking directly to this specific moment of vulnerability, they unlocked a far deeper emotional territory.

Sport England went beyond simply encouraging exercise, and uncovered the real, emotional barriers to participation.​ They spoke to where women actually were rather than where fitness marketing assumed they should be.

These campaigns succeeded not because they were worthy, but because they found emotional realities their competitors had ignored, sanitised or simply misunderstood.

When it comes to men, where’s the equivalent? Where is the work that captures the unspoken realities of being male? That understands what men are actually thinking about, worrying about, aspiring to?

There have been well-intentioned attempts to speak to the male experience:

These campaigns compassionately highlight the male mental health crisis as a tragic statistic to be aware of, but they stop short of asking why men are struggling.

This campaign tells us that real men are caring, but it doesn’t interrogate what societal or internal pressures might make it hard to express that strength.

We're still telling stories stuck at the surface, or based on assumptions rather than understanding. And in doing so, we're missing the chance to tell stories that resonate.

To create loving men

Maybe these early efforts are where we need to begin. Of course the way brands spoke to women wasn’t an overnight revolution. Early efforts were criticised as empty, superficial, even exploitative. These contemporary representations of male stories might just be the necessary stage we need to go through to get broader acceptance and movement.

But what does that next stage look like? We've already proven our capacity to dig deeper when we care enough to try. The question then becomes: What are the equivalent 'unspoken' realities or taboo topics in men's lives that we currently avoid, sugarcoat, or simply fail to see? 

There are glimpses of what this could look like. Punk band IDLES channels male anger and frustration without resorting to toxic caricatures. Their loud, aggressive exterior masks profound messages of vulnerability and self-acceptance. In songs like "Television," they directly confront internal self-criticism: "If someone talked to you / The way you do to you / I'd put their teeth through / Love yourself."

Or consider FX’s The Bear: Richie embodies inherited masculine patterns – reaching for violence when conflict arises, struggling with emotional expression. But the show demonstrates how men can learn to form healthier relationships and find new ways to connect, even when starting from difficult places.

For all its controversy, the Manosphere, when stripped of the anger often found in its answers, shows a willingness to listen to men's questions. Questions about what they are actually thinking, worrying about, and aspiring to.

This isn't about turning every campaign into a conversation about male struggles. It's about creating work that feels genuinely relevant to men's lives. The aspirational marketing can work – selling success, confidence, achievement – but it needs to be grounded in where men actually are, not where we think they should be.

What would happen if we approached men with the same curiosity we've learned to bring elsewhere? The opportunity isn't to solve their problems, but to understand them well enough to create work that actually gets through.

Loving men is a chance to tell better stories, and the best ones haven’t been told yet.