Mon 4 Oct 2010
The Land of the Free
Posted by anaglyph under Daft Advertising, Perfume, Strange Lands, Words
[21] Comments
Hmmm. Smells mostly like bullshit to me…
Actually, only one of those three mentioned things has any smell at all and I don’t think I’m alone in not having the faintest inkling of what a palm tree smells like. ((It can’t smell like coconut, otherwise they’d have said ‘smells like coconut’. Surely.))
Well, if Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that freedom smells like napalm. Not sure that’s necessarily the way to go with a deodorant, but it’ll be distinctive!
I think it’s actually ‘victory’ that smells like napalm. And ‘honesty’ smells like apple & cinnamon, I guess.
You’re right of course. Freedom’s more of a cheeseburger grease type aroma.
I wonder what ’emancipation’ smells like? ‘Truancy’? ‘Indifference’?
I think I’m onto something here…
It smells like Malach
Like I said… bullshit.
I kind of like this. It’s like the advertisers tried to come up with a description of the smell and then just threw up their hands and said “Fuck it! Let’s just say Palm Trees, Sunshine and Freedom” – after which they all laughed and went back to drinking heavily. But the next day one of them said, “you know, that ain’t a bad idea at all …”
I use the same sun lotion every year because the smell of it still reminds me of my late teens-early twenties, when I used to stay at a holiday house up the coast and go to the beach with friends on summer holidays. It always takes me back.
Cue “you really should stop sniffing it” jokes …
It reminds me of nothing so much as the daft aspirational adspeak that I covered in my musings on flavour chemistry some while back.
But you’re on the right track – the people in charge of Old Spice advertising are running up the flag with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks (to mix some very colourful metaphors). Some of the copy for this range of deodorants reads:
‘No man is an island, but for anyone man enough to brave the open ocean, Old Spice Cyprus can help you smell like an island.’
So UV, would you call that lotion your “signature scent”?
And this reminds me of the Seinfield episode where Kramer invents the scent ‘Ocean’ which smells of sun screen lotion (among other things). In an illustration of life imitating art, there are now several such scents on the market, including the inimitable Chris Brosius’s nostalgic M. Hulot’s Holiday which, according to the I Hate Perfume website, is redolent of “the salty breath of the breeze off the sea, driftwood, rocks covered with seaweed and the smell of old leather suitcasesâ€.
And that’s exactly what it brings to mind!
Wha??
The person to whom you responded just crossed over a line of civility into a realm that I won’t tolerate. I have taken the unprecedented action of blocking her from posting on The Cow. It’s enough that she posts her meandering and addle-headed psychobabble (which I have put up with, as taxing as it is) but it’s pretty plain that her sole intent now is just to troll.
It’s often the case with such people. They are unable to follow any lines of logic and reasoning and so eventually they degenerate into name-calling and abuse. One wonders why they can’t see just how much of a QED it is for their ‘arguments’.
We won’t be seeing justsayupyours here anymore.
DANG, Rev! The exchanges with justsayupyours were the best bits here at the Cow that didn’t involve … y’know … poemin’ and stuff!
Better get some poemskis goin’ or else it’s just preachin’ to the converted now.
We woulda done right by ya, Rev. We all been on the schoolyard too, ya know.
You might think about doin’ sompm about the smell o’ rotten turnips around here, though.
I know you would have rallied. But there’s tone and there’s tone. Y’know?
As for the turnip aroma, I’ve kinda gotten used to it. It reminds me of home.
There’s no need to shout “Up yours!”
As the sweat flows out your pores.
Rotten turnips don’t smell nice
So please put on some dang’d old spice.
Spicy!
Companies are firmly bent
On finding some peculiar scent.
Maybe what will truly sell
Is new Old Spice with armpit-smell.
A new Old Spice with armpit smell?
Not thoughts on which I want to dwell…
Where next, one wonders, would it go?
The scent of tramp? L’eau Hobo?
Perhaps Cologne d’Urinal
Might tempt that recalcitrant gal?
Parfum du Socks? Air freshening cheese?
I sure hope no-one tells Febreze…