Old Spice Commercial Visual Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE

The commercial I chose was an Old Spice ad called “the man your man could smell like” from 2010. This has always been one of my favorite commercials because of the out of the box ideas, absurdity, randomness, and comedic aspects. The commercial starts by dollying in on the actor from afar. He is standing shirtless in a towel with the shower running in the background and the rule of thirds is taking place here while he is on the center screen. This automatically catches the viewer’s attention and draws them in to watch the rest of the ad.

The commercial takes an interesting stance because although the products are for men, they target women by starting off by saying “hello ladies”. The actor holds up an old spice body wash bottle so (with context if you have heard of the brand before) right away you would know it’s a men’s grooming product ad. It is unusual for them to then address the other gender but the whole point of the ad is to show women what they should want their men to smell like. The thoughtfulness behind what seems to just be a silly commercial is what intrigues me the most.

They use many effective aspects of marketing by getting both gender’s attention and then having a very unusual and surprising plot as well. Mixing the two for a very productive commercial. The ad uses camera movements like panning up and down to then change the whole scenery because with editing they change the location of where the actor is. The camera pans down and then back up very quickly where the watcher finds themselves suddenly on a boat rather than in his bathroom. They use the camera movements in very distinct and precise ways to show or hide whatever they want on the screen. An example of this is when the camera trucks right with him walking on the boat but you can’t see his whole body as you could before. It then pans down a bit and dollys out and were able to then see him sitting on a horse, which for us came out of nowhere.

Other than the purposeful and effective camera movements, the entire ad is comedic because of the outrageousness. The ad’s purpose is to sell their products to men but also entice women to want their men to wear the products. First, the body wash magically transports him to a yacht, and then the product turns into tickets to the girl’s favorite event and then into diamonds. It is so random and striking but also clever because the whole premise is to show that anything is possible when you smell that good. They jokingly insinuate if you use old spice you will be a “romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot.” I find that this is a very good marketing strategy.

I was interested in whether or not the double-gender appeal and the comedic and sexual aspects worked for their profit. So I looked it up and after just 6 months of having started the “the man your man could smell like” campaign, their sales went up 125% (Moore, 2013). That shows how effective this ad was, especially because it is 10 years old and so many people still know it today!

Work Cited

Moore, S. (2020, July 13). The Campaign That Saved Old Spice. Retrieved November 06, 2020, from https://medium.com/better-marketing/the-campaign-that-saved-old-spice-d925bed9aee8