Monday, May 3, 2010

The Commercialization of Commercials: Old Spice

By FORCH F. FORTIER

The right commercial can evoke the best response out of us all. We watch them, and maybe we use the product, maybe we don’t. But the memory of that commercial can live in our heads forever.

Take for instance, The Old Spice commercial entitled “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”. This commercial is simple, yet brilliant, and to top it all off it’s visually impressive.

All it is, is a topless African American gentleman with a very deep and sexy voice is telling women to basically stop having their men use their personal “women scented” body wash, and switch to Old Spice so that they can smell like him.

All the meanwhile, he’s letting the women of the world know that their man is not him, but smelling like him is the next best thing to being him, and then using visual aids to sell the fact that using Old Spice body wash that anything is possible.

The timing of the commercial is perfect in its execution.

The actor does a tremendous job selling the product, and the commercial is all one take, which means that [I’m sure it took a number of takes, let alone the post production work] it has to be very fluid in its motion, which it is.

Does it make you want to use Old Spice Body Wash?

I know that it doesn’t make me use it, but I don’t use body wash, I use regular soap. Why? Because I love cleaning soap scum out of my shower.

Is this a commercial that you will remember 5 years from now?

Perhaps. I can see it running for quite a while, and since it’s not very offensive, and very comedic in its delivery, it can be played across a broad number of channels.

Is it funny?

After over 100 times seeing it, I still snicker, so yeah.

2 comments:

MagickalHack said...

"The right commercial can evoke the best response out of us all. We watch them, and maybe we use the product, maybe we don’t. But the memory of that commercial can live in our heads forever."

I kinda agree with this, but the "right" commercial is supposed to touch us so well that it makes us want to buy the product, from [in using the Old Spice commercial as the example] the girlfriend that wants their boyfriend to smell more manly to the loser that is just trying to find a way to be more successful with women.

And yeah, I thought the commercial was extremely amusing.

Sare said...

I just saw this commercial for the first time last night. It's pretty great, and got response out of most of the theater's audience...the only commercial to do so. But it shall never be as great as the Bruce Campbell Old Spice commercials. :)

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