It’s nothing new, but a surefire way to get the public’s attention is to use SEX. Sex sells. However, with everybody and their funny uncle using sex to sell now-a-days, many marketers have found that they need a little something “extra” to rise above the noise of cleavage, hot, sweaty bodies, and innuendo. (When marketing ethics and morals exit through the door, sex comes innuendo. Ba-dum-DUM.) The latest vendor to try something even more outrageous in the SexOlympics is…drum roll please…Old Spice.

Old Spice? Yep. This is not your father’s aftershave. Old Spice (which is now not only an after shave, but a line extention to all sorts of personal grooming products), has treated us to a series of spots featuring a showering spokes-centaur. We hear all the deceptive cadence jokes – “I’m two things in one …a man…and a pretty smart shopper.” The pitch highlights their “dual formula ” body wash, with some nonsense about how it contains both moisturizer and body wash (a.k.a. “liquid soap”). Hang on a nanosec…

Here’s a question for you: What does soap actually do? Answer: it acts as a way to allow water and oils to bond, thereby helping the water to wash away the oils that trap dirt and bacteria on your body.

Here’s another: What are moisturizers? Answer: they are oily substances that lubricate your skin.

So if soap washes away oil, and moisturizers add oil, how exactly does a moisturizing soap work?

Be the inherent illogic of the product as it may, what Old Spice is trying to do here is to make the point that there product is really two products in one. No problem there. But they way they are doing it is to make the rather obvious implication (by using a spokes-centaur) that their product will somehow make you well-endowed. Sure enough, a babe wearing a shorty robe enters, and makes the same deceptive comparison, forcing the viewer to think “no, he’s a man…AND A CENTAUR!” Wow. So a centaur is well endowed…and he uses Old Spice…so buying…Old…Spice…would make…me…

Um…yeah. So in order to make a lame comparison, Old Spice is now essentially promoting bestiality? Okay, I know centaurs are mythical creatures. And I acknowledge that they, at the very least, had the good sense to only imply the bestiality- and avoid the worst jokes, puns, and one-liners. But just because they didn’t go for the jugular doesn’t mean what they are doing is a good idea. W’eve got enough organizations out there contributing to the decline of Western Civ. without having Old Spice go over to the dark side. Do we really need some company telling us that if we want to score with the ladies, we’re competing with the equine world? I don’t think so. Sorry Old Spice. Send this spot back to the showers. Or the stables. You decide.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 21st, 2008 at 5:38 pm and is filed under advertising, marketing, media.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.