Sunday, September 15, 2013

TOW #1 - Visual Text: Old Spice Commercial


If you have access to either a functioning television or youtube, chances are that you’ve seen or at least heard of the ultra-popular Old Spice ads featuring the impossibly handsome and charming Isaiah Mustafa. The most popular commercial begins with Mustafa in a bathroom wearing nothing but a towel around his waist and holding a bottle of the featured body wash while speaking directly to his primary audience, ladies. Mustafa’s very first lines make it explicitly clear who their target audience is when while staring straight into the camera he states , “Hello ladies, look at you man. Now back to me, now back at your man, now back to me. Sadly, he isn’t me.” The purpose of this series of commercials is rather obviously to sell Old Spice Body Wash by using Mustafa as rhetoric himself. Firstly, this is extremely persuading rhetoric for women buying for men given that Mustafa is an exceptionally handsome man and that all they need to do for their men to be just a little more like Mustafa (devilishly attractive) is to buy and use Old Spice Body Wash. But wait, of course there’s more. The commercial presents Mustafa not only as good-looking, but as if he is the perfect man. After the bathroom scene, the commercial advances to Mustafa on an expensive boat holding “two tickets to that thing you love” which then magically mutate into countless diamonds and as the camera zooms out we see that he is actually riding a horse on a tropical beach with an ocean sunset in the background. As if his looks and charming voice weren’t enough, he is shown to also be thoughtful through the “two tickets to that thing you love”, as well as genuinely romantic through the horseback ride during a picture-perfect tropical sunset. Aside from using Mustafa himself as rhetoric, the commercials also utilize comedy to appeal to males buying for themselves. If having the chance to become more like an ideal man isn’t enough, the outrageous and ridiculous perfection should without a doubt seal the deal. Through the rhetorical strategies of using Mustafa himself and outright humor, Old Spice successfully convinces its audience of both men and women that buying its body wash will be one of the best decisions they can make.

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