I don’t know quite what to make of this new webvertising campaign from Old Spice. The gist of it, I’m pretty sure, is something along the lines of "Old Spice: It’s not just your grandfather’s line of masculine grooming liquids, lotions and sprays anymore."
The message is all muddled, though. There’s some of the totally reactionary sissy-baiting of the Milwaukee’s Best ads, some of more sophisticated sissy-baiting of the Miller Lite "Man Law" ads, and then there’s a whole new element of weird quasi-self-meta-awareness that sort of winks and says that they’re not really taking themselves too seriously. This melange of confused masculinity is evident even in the front page, which announces: ATTENTION INEXPERIENCED GUYS.
We’ve seen you, yes you, drowning yourselves with European manfume in sleek black cannisters. But there’s hope: Your presence here suggests that you have the desire to be an Old Spice man of experience. Excellent. So roll up your shirt sleeves and get ready for some serious experiencing. Ahoy.
The “manfume” and the Euro-baiting are pretty standard manvertising tropes, but what about the “get ready for some serious experiencing.” I’m pretty sure there’s a meta-ironic wink there. And the “Ahoy” is just sloppy – the Old Spice nautical theme hasn’t even been introduced yet, and the young demo isn’t familiar enough with the brand to assume it, so it just seems like a non sequitur.
Anyway, there’s just something half-baked about the whole thing. There’s no editorial vision, which is to say that there’s no masculine vision unifying the whole thing—there’s no guy who’s going to look at this website and have the epiphany that he’s really, in his core, an Old Spice man.
