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February 13, 2010

Awesome new Old Spice commercial I’m on a horse.

I just watched this spot about a dozen times.

It makes me consider writing something about how I’ve used Old Spice deodorant for years because I prefer their snap-to-dispense solid despite how abhorrent I find their Axe-esque product line to be, a conflict that typically results in me staring blankly at a wall of antiperspirants in the personal grooming aisle attempting to determine which of their cryptically named scents will suck the least. I find that fact especially interesting considering how much I’ve loved all their ads in this vein since the first one with Bruce Campbell in 2007. It makes me wonder if they contribute at all to my brand loyalty, because I feel as if I consider the two totally independently of each other.

It also makes me want to write about a quote from Banksy which scares the hell out of me:

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

My own aspirations to work in the field are sufficient for that observation to give me pause, but work like this seems to give his argument even more credence. Had the teams at W+K Portland who created this ad (and its predecessors) been born in a parallel universe where they engaged in the only slightly artsier career of comedy, or more specifically tv/film comedy, I’m convinced they’d have solved NBC’s late night woes three times over. And it’s not just the writing, although the whole damn thing is so funny that it’s not even worth trying to choose which quotes to pull. Let’s take art direction; the inexplicably soapy bottle only gets funnier when you consider that the best explanation is a self-referential gag about over the top product depictions in ads. Then there’s the perfectly plopped breton sweater, the endlessly flowing diamonds, and so on. And of course, the casting, which has been consistently awesome throughout the campaign—but holy fuck is this guy good. “I’m on a horse” is terrific, of course, but check out the delivery on “you’re on a boat” and, my personal favorite, “the tickets are now diamonds.” Absolute murder. I can’t find a single frame, a single line, a single inflection that doesn’t seem perfect.

Anyhow, I’m too tired to do a better job of composing my thoughts, so just watch that funny thing and be glad that there are people out there who work hard to make awesome stuff that makes us all laugh, whatever their intentions (though I will note that the cool kids at W+K don’t lie awake at night wondering if we’re going to purchase Old Spice brand products; they already know they did good work and P&G has long since paid them anyway).

12:50am | URL: http://attn.ryanmf.com/post/386966873/nowbacktome

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