What does it mean to be a ‘man’ or to be ‘manly’? Do you have to have children, be muscular, drive a fast car, be powerful, etc? The recent Old Spice marketing campaign sets out to help answer this exact question. Old Spice, a manufacturer of male hygiene products, uses a wide range of print and video advertisements to showcase the power of their product. These advertisements focus mainly on manhood and sex. Although the two seem to go hand in hand I will try and focus by close extended analysis on how Old Spice can make you ‘manly’. I have seen the Old Spice commercials on television many times before but when I started the search process for this project I ran across my first print advertisement from the Old Spice campaign and thought that they would be very interesting to analyze.There are two advertisements in the November 2008 issue of Maxim Magazine, the first of which I will be using as my primary source. With this ad I will dig deep into the way that the designers create a certain desire using these advertisements. With evidence from my primary advertisement and supporting examples I will analyze the way in which the ad creates certain desires, what theses desires are, and the over all function behind the advertisements themselves.
Old Spice has a very clear and precise target audience, men. Whether old, young, smart, dumb, good looking, or not so good looking, Old Spice is trying to win you over in the battle for male hygiene products. They use some of the oldest tricks in the book; keying in on sex and manliness, but approaching both with humor. The prime example that I found uses male celebrity LL Cool J to show how Old Spice Swagger deodorant took him from a scared shy boy to a hugely successful man. With this manliness, supposedly comes the power to get beautiful women. As we see in the print advertisement there is a large photo of LL Cool J when he was younger, not very attractive and looking rather awkward. Below the photo we see the LL Cool J of today looking handsome and powerful. There is a quote that says:
With Old Spice Swagger, I’m doin’ it and doin’ it and doin’ it well. Before wager, I was doin’ it and doin’ it and doin’ it just okay. Thanks, Old Spice. –LL Cool J
What this quote does is simply state that Old Spice Swagger made him a more manly and attractive man, but it also implies that he was still “doin’ it” before but “just okay”. By repeating the phrase “doin’ it” he refers to his success with women and how Swagger played a roll in that success. Old Spice was the key he needed to become the man he is today. The ad brings all of this together to create a certain desire, which is the ability to make you manlier. This is a very common desire among men. By choosing to say that LL Cool J was “doin’ it” before but “doin’ it well” after using Swagger, there is a feeling of comfort to the adolescent male audience because what the audience wants to feel is “I’m doing ok right now but this Swagger stuff could really help me”. Old Spice knows this about the male viewer and uses both photos and words to create desire. The next examples use video to do create the same feelings/desires.
Next we analysis the same advertisement but this time the video version, played widely across many different television stations. The commercial features the same kid “LL Cool J” as in the print ad and is set in a basement dance party. We see from the video that LL leaves the group of guys that he is with and approaches the target (the female beauty), when she turns and says hi, he screams in a high pitch. This scene drives home the same desires as the print ad, LL Cool J is out there “doin’ it” (hanging out and approaching women), but without success until Swagger. Even more than the print ad the video focuses on using the humor of kid LL Cool J and his scream; this humor brings happiness to the viewer. This is what Old Spice wants; men to walk into a store see their product and think about how funny the commercial was, because if not anything else you are thinking about their product line.
Lastly, and maybe the best example of manly desire, comes from another Old Spice commercial. It is a manly test showing that only Old Spice, compared to a competitor, “…performs in real man situations like basketball, recon, and frenching.” Like the other two examples Old Spice uses humor again by showing chest hair growing instantly when the deodorant is applied. Of course the viewer knows this won’t happen when they apply the product, but it is the idea that if you want to be manlier you need Old Spice. This is exactly the desire the creators of the marketing campaign were trying to thrust on the male audience. Old Spice offers to buy the viewer a stick of they old deodorant if they are unhappy with the results, this also show the view the product confidence that Old Spice has. Using humor, confidence and the promise manliness Old Spice has done good job of creating desire for their products.
In conclusion we can see that Old Spice knew whom and how to market their male hygiene products, whether or not the campaign was successful is beside the point. Old Spice has done what nearly every other advertisement does. To find what desires the target audiences has and then focus an advertisement that provokes and offers these desires to the viewer. So do Old Spice products make you manlier? I don’t know but I use their products and look at me, just kidding.
Kirk McCamish
T.A. Steve Wetzel
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