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If You Read This, You Will Have Sex

By Eugene Mirman, Monday, Dec. 12 2005 @ 5:51PM
Comments (14)

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."

Comments (14) Write Comment
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Comments (14)

Mark Diaz says:

Great article. very funny. made me want to find an Axe and play guitar...

Posted On: Tuesday, Dec. 13 2005 @ 6:49PM
Mo! says:

The good thing about Axe though:if some hipster creep starts hitting on you, you can use it as repellent.

Posted On: Tuesday, Dec. 13 2005 @ 11:21PM
Mo! says:

Still, Axe body spray is good hipster repellent. In case some hipster creep starts hitting on you.

Posted On: Tuesday, Dec. 13 2005 @ 11:23PM
Anonymous says:

Uhh, did i miss something? I thought that was what the can was for.

Posted On: Tuesday, Dec. 13 2005 @ 11:49PM
Jaclyn says:

Dang.

Posted On: Wednesday, Dec. 14 2005 @ 1:09AM
Connie says:

Like all deodorants, Axe smells really bad. Since it's a total body spray, men working out at the gym reek of it - and IMO their natural body odors would be far less offensive. I cannot imagine any woman with a keen sense of smell wanting to be in the same room with, let alone go down on, any man wearing it.

Posted On: Thursday, Dec. 15 2005 @ 10:00PM
Henning von Weber says:

The article is really funny. However it makes me wonder: is the point that the Mr E. Mirman is making that ads are generally wrong -- so that adding sex to them (thus making them more efficient) -- are making them more irritatingly wrong as well? If so, let me throw in some free votes in favor of what ads, -- after all! -- have done to the world: they have made it far easier for women to undress as much as they please, and for people to have sex in public -- in contrast to the pre-TV-ad-world where churches were sensoring all.

Having said that, perhaps it would be a delight to see more of the honoring of the human body free from the tokens, signs and symbols of the empires of monopolistic commercialism, be it clothes or perfumes or cars.

Posted On: Saturday, Dec. 17 2005 @ 8:00PM
petey pablo says:

or

A used can of axe spray rolls his direction, quickly sobering him up (like a baby that stops crying because an adult is making a fool of themselves) slowly he sniffs it, kisses, licks, then yes, he too gets done by the bottle of axe, in an awkward breathtaking display of axes full potential. Therefore completing the circle of life and in an odd twist unlocking the centuries old secret of exactly how the people at axe were able to create that distinct smell.

Posted On: Sunday, Dec. 18 2005 @ 11:09PM
Worker #3116 says:

There was also the ad where women rubbed up against various metal objects because some guy who used AXE had recycled his empty AXE cannister and then the metals were melted down (smelted down?) and turned into new metals. I think you see where I'm going with this, but basically AXE went straight for the extreme left-wing liberal tree-hugging hippy consumers. Which is our grossest consumers.

Fuck AXE, the bad way.

Posted On: Tuesday, Dec. 27 2005 @ 3:49PM
Anonymous says:

A wolf is running away with beer??!!
That's the funniest thing I read on the internet
Jarry

Posted On: Wednesday, Dec. 28 2005 @ 6:52AM
Brian says:

Wow...I love this column. Go Axe!

Posted On: Saturday, Jan. 7 2006 @ 7:38PM
Dustin Geise says:

Well the thing that got me to read your article was the heading that says "If you read this, you will have sex". To put it plain and simple it didn't work. I'm still a 36 year old virgin that lives in my moms basement. Thanks alot jerk.

Posted On: Saturday, Feb. 4 2006 @ 1:40AM
sarah k says:

why are you so hilarious? no, WHY.

Posted On: Thursday, Mar. 16 2006 @ 11:47AM
addy says:

The scary thing is the truckload of ad industry awards won from the Axe campaigns. Idiot men!

Posted On: Friday, Mar. 31 2006 @ 11:06PM

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