Remember that post we did about Old Spice and how much we loved it and how much we wish we smelled like that man and how we wondered how they did it. Well, look what I found!
I had no clue Weiden + Kennedy was responsible for this, and its insane how little CGI they used for the actual commercial – especially in a world overrun by CGI monkeys and ants ruining the best things about my childhood.
Proving that not all of the French Press Films team are children of the 80’s, after the thousandth viewing of Old Spice’s recent ad campaign, one of us noticed the inspiration of one Mr. Tom Vu:
Although not quite the ab-endowed manly man of Old Spice’s campaign, you can’t help but hear echoes of Tom Vu in the yacht-riding narration of the “Man Your Man Can Smell Like.” These infomercials, which made real estate broker/poker player Thomas Vu famous in the 1980’s, also feature an ostensibly successful man yelling at us from the TV, plus or minus a yacht and/or a horse. Vu might have the upper hand here, considering his decision to provide testimonials read off of cue cards in between yelling advice at us. Our current favorite Vu-ism? “Are you afraid to ask your Boss for the day off to come to my seminar? Well then you don’t deserve to be rich.”
Below the cut, Tom Vu shows you his waterfall and talks about his loser friends.
If there’s one thing the French Press Films crew all agree on, its that we love clever adverts that make us laugh and scratch our heads as we figure out how they made it. Case in point: the Old Spice “Manmercials” campaign which we can’t get enough of. Watch:
AJ, Chris, and Roman must have watched this video about 6,000 times, accounting for .03% of the total viewership. Big ups to Old Spice for letting the ad agency they hired pretty much do whatever they want in terms of creative direction and even bigger ups to the creative agency for pulling it off.
Now, compare it to Dove for Men, the other soap company trying to lure in the “Now You’re a Man, A Manny Manny Man” market:
I get what Dove is trying to do, but it doesn’t come across nearly as effective as the Old Spice adverts, most likely due to that annoying goddamn song that I’ve been humming for two days straight. Also, don’t advertisers know one minute is way too long to keep my attention?