Riggs Partners

Humor has it: Old Spice

“If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.”
- a bottle of Old Spice

Old Spice has long been considered a staple in the musky shaving kits of dads and grandfathers everywhere. However, it has recently taken on an entirely different role as the harbinger of red-blooded masculinity to younger men across America who long for hairier chests, lumberjack beards, or biceps the size of Mount Rushmore. Luckily for these men, Old Spice has just what they need — and it’s not a 2-year gym membership or a year’s supply of Rogaine, either — it’s a healthy dose of humor.

Two years ago, Old Spice began a series of commercials in which masculinity was personified through the likes of one muscular, smooth-talking man who, with the help of some common stereotypes, attempts to persuade viewers to buy Old Spice body wash. These ads use just the right amount of humor and irony to appeal not only to the woman buying smelly soap for her significant other, but also to the man who wants to smell decent without sacrificing his masculinity. The original commercial, which won the Film Grand Prix at the International Advertising Festival at Cannes in 2010, has certainly contributed to much of the company’s growth since then. The popularity of the commercial has grown so much that it’s YouTube video has now reached nearly 40 million views and there have been several parodies of it as well.

Old Spice has continued to sail the ship of satirical humor on into 2012. In one if their most recent commercials, former football player Terry Crews literally bursts onto the set of a Bounce Dryer Bars commercial via explosion and a giant jet ski, loudly proclaiming (or yelling, really) how Old Spice Body Spray is “so powerful, it sells itself in other people’s commercials.” These commercials, while very different from the other series in terms of content, are so unique that even the most curmudgeonly viewer couldn’t help but remember them.

Broadcast is not the only form in which Old Spice is appealing to its target audience. Their sense of humor trickles down to the packaging as well. Each item is adorned with a classy desaturated illustration, bold modern type in all-caps, and sleek matte packaging. All appealing looks aside, when a stick of deodorant is named after a 14,690-foot mountain in the Swiss Alps and purportedly smells of “ice, wind, and freedom,” the target audience is obviously a little more specific than just any old man.

This sense of humor appeals to a younger audience of men whose hands have not been calloused from hard labor like those of their fathers and grandfathers. They don’t take life too seriously because they don’t have to yet. Therefore, they laugh about their scrawny arms, baby faces, and complete inability to understand their girlfriends, as if it were something that couldn’t be helped. And Old Spice, bottling up the romantic ideals of a generation into one concise container of manliness, tells them that’s alright.