By Rick Stanton
When I was a kid and my Dad would get ready for work, the smell of Old Spice permeated the house. It made me borderline nauseous. However, as I soon came to realize, all my buddies’ houses smelled like that, too. Apparently there was only one kind of aftershave product in the ’50s.
As we Boomers began to age to say 18, we abandoned any such products our old men used for much more sophisticated fragrances, like Hai Karate, Jade East and Faberge Brut.
We all were convinced that using one of these overbearing, saccharine-smelling agents of allure was the secret to a slow dance on Friday night turning into something more after the dance was over. It wasn’t.
It was more likely the reason most of us dumb-asses ended up drinking Heidelberg beers behind the gym and talking about what should have happened if that Mary Lou wasn’t such a snob.
While you still can buy those old brands (empirical research), I sure never sense them wafting through the air today. Apparently, no one wants to smell like a cloying, odoriferous Lothario these days.
Which brings me back to Old Spice. This brand was as dead as a doornail, and then it wasn’t. If ever there was a testimonial to the power of great creative, it’s Old Spice.
Credit Wieden + Kennedy for the thinking and subsequent engaging work, and the client for the guts to let it happen. As a result, something very old (and in my opinion, still stinky) has become new again.
That’s a hard, nigh impossible task, but when executed at the level WK does things, sometimes the advertising is the only reason something sells. Check out the links below that help add context to this column. A couple of them will make you laugh because the ads are as horrible as the products.
I often wonder what would have happened with Mary Lou if I’d only worn Old Spice…hmmm.
http://creativity-online.com/work/old-spice-talk-to-the-land/54965
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtwh3nQP5Uo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4X2tSHgC-OU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiQT6mdMnH0
https://www.slideshare.net/saulbetmead/brand-revival-final-s
