My wife, The Hot Little Number, has two smiles. One is a nice, warm smile appropriate for everyday use. Its a perfectly pleasant smile and I always enjoy seeing it. It pales in comparison however to smile #2. That one is bigger, brighter and blazes with raw, megawatt sex appeal. I like that smile. Lately I feel like I don't make it appear often enough, so anything that does is intriguing to me.
Now, I have to confess that intrigued was not my first reaction when I saw the new Old Spice "Look at Your Man" commercial the other night for the first time. The Hot Little Number is looking at him, then looking at me, then looking at him, and by the time the commercial is over, she's got the megawatt smile going and she's cracking up. I'm feeling a little perturbed. I ask the Hot Little Number, how the heck do they think they are gonna sell me Old Spice with that pitch?. She laughs and says "they're betting that I'm the one buying the smell good. I'm thinking , yeah, damn right, cuz I'm not feeling like shelling out my hard earned cash for some Old Spice after Mr. Pecs finishes comparing and contrasting my mild flabby flab with his rock hard abs.
Later on, I run into an online ad with the same guy at You Tube. In this one, you get a choice of watching his spot again or finding out ways to romance your woman. I think to myself, okay, something I can use and click through for some of this assistance brother man is offering, which turns out to be kinda cool. So I decide that the whole Old Spice "Look at Your Man" campaign is not quite so foul.
The other thing that struck me about this commercial is how times have changed. I wonder if the Old Spice marketing folks believed this ad would be effective to capture the buying attention of white women? Old Spice using a sexy black man to sell the product is just a weird contrast to the Old Spice commercials I think I remember from my youth. Didn't those all used to have like this handsome Nordic white guy with a corn cob pipe in his mouth in a seaman's jacket with the smell of the sea about him? (or is that the Irish Spring commercials of old?). Now, unless Old Spice is now competing with the likes of Drakar (Yes, I'm dating myself) and such for the black male fragrance top spot, I don't recall Old Spice being marketed to brothers or their women, but without a doubt this ad is clearly designed to get the attention of a black woman. Its effective too, if the back and forth glances of the Hot Little Number are an accurate judge. So brothers, tell me, how does this ad strike you? How did your woman react? If you are a white female reader, tell me, does this ad make you think about adding some Old Spice to the shopping cart? Anybody had a new bottle of Old Spice show up in your bathroom recently?
UPDATE: My wife, the Hot Little Number, just bought me some Old Spice.
