Proctor and Gamble’s Old Spice/ The man your man should smell like. “Anything is possible when your man smells like Old Spice and not a lady.” Is the message of this advertisement for Old Spice aftershave located here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE
The video aired as a television ad, but can be seen on Old Spice’s official YouTube channel, where they poke fun at stereotyping in a statement in the “show more” section of the videos page as follows: “We 're not saying this body wash will make your man smell like a romantic millionaire jet fighter pilot, but we are insinuating it.” The video is for men’s after shave and features a muscular, athletic looking man with a deep British sounding voice who asks the audience (he refers to as “ladies”) to compare their man to him by asking several times to look at their man and back at him. Then suggests that their man is not hi, but if he stop using body wash which smells like a lady and switched to Old Spice he quotes “He could smell like he’s me.” (Old Spice, 2010). Although the commercial can be perceived as satire on stereotyping what a man should look and smell like, it is still focused on ladies, and suggests what a
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Fortune magazine characterizes their television ad of the “bare-chested Casanova, who tells their female audience that their brand will make their man smell like him,” as “Pop-Culture” and “tongue in cheek” (Shambora, 2010). Nevertheless, the man behind this advertisement, Scottish-born Iain Taitt, increased digital revenues for Proctor and Gamble by 50% in 2010 from his Old Spice ads (Shambora, 2010). Could it be that the image of the Old Spice man effect the viewer emotionally, as our text suggests? However, pictorial stereotypes often become misinformed perceptions that have the weight of established facts, and if they are repeated often, they can remain in a person’s memory for a lifetime (Lester,