If You Read This, You Will Have Sex
Posted by Eugene Mirman at 5:51 PM, December 12, 2005
I understand that advertising has to make it seem like buying a product will give you two things: the product itself (it has to, legally) and all of your fantasies coming true.
That's the price we pay for finding happiness from a cereal or car. Sometimes though, ads can be so overbearingly aggressive and sexual that it's a bit much. There's a number of Budweiser ads on the subway that give the impression that hot multi-racial couples are going to put beers in each others asses. But the ad does it's job—it makes me want chill out at a bar with a Bud, partially for the taste, but mostly to send the signal that if you hang with me, I'll put a beer in your ass.
Still, the ad that I recently saw (on TV) that I really hate was for Axe body spray. (Not to be mistaken with some new copy-cat body spray where foreign exchange students sex-attack a teenager because he smells like Thunder or whatever.) In this Axe commercial, some guy sprays his arm down to his penis. Cut to—that guy on a date in a car. (Maybe at Inspiration Point?!) His date begins to kiss (or sniff?) his arm (it smells soooooo good) and then moves down towards his penis. I think the tag line is "Show them the way."
I'm not exactly sure why I hate the ad so much. Clearly, in the world of this ad, women don't know where the penis is. Which is a real problem (if you want to have a healthy relationship.) They need a guide. And a giant blinking sign is expensive (not to mention tacky.) And smell is the most powerful sense (in terms of memory.) So if you use Axe three, maybe four times, women would eventually associate the penis with the delicious, intoxicating smell of Axe body spray (creating something akin to a scent-based Pavlovian Dick Bell.)
It's possible the makers may think the ad is a parody of sexual advertising, because it's so preposterous, I don't know. I doubt it since it seems geared at 16 year olds. Either way, the whole campaign is extremely annoying. (However, though spraying Axe on your penis is a ridiculous way to seduce women, using room temperature hot fudge really does work.)
A few years ago Axe started with ads of women tearing at men in an elevator, then did ads where people have sex in various small, public spaces (airplane bathrooms, boats, lockers, etc), and now they've turned Axe into some sort of blowjob spray. They are in danger of running out of ways to say Axe = Sex.
Unless they have the BALLS to make the ultimate commercial—open on a beautiful woman in a bikini, giggling, high on cocaine; she's disoriented, but happy (she doesn't need college, she's either rich, or a disposable object—probably both!) Either way, this HOT woman is fucking the shit out of a huge can of Axe (maybe two! Go Axe! Go Axe! Yes!) Sometimes she throws up a little, keeps laughing, and fucking the can(s). Just a few feet away a guy (with his pants down) is sitting and crying. (In the background, a wolf is running away with beer.) The guy is really, really sad—no beer, no girl. Then—back to the euphoric woman/can love scene. The tag line? "This can could've been your dick."
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