Advert Analysis- Terry Crews Old Spice

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq2SlCja3zo&t=113s

Media Language

Throughout its years of marketing, the Old Spice brand has attracted customers from older demographics whether it be their shampoo or deodorant products, thus their attempt to reach males aged 12-34 had to involve a new form of advertising, unlike their older advertisements the Terry Crews campaign is in no way serious and instead uses comedy to convey the quality of the product, Terry Crews praises the product in the clips at times mentioning how the shampoo keeps you smelling good for 12 whole hours but never goes to full-jargon mode or explains away the composition of the product, since the comedy has separated them from competition.

Representation

The advertisement tries to convey that the product is somehow masculine or will make its users more masculine in an attempt to appeal to a male dominated audience who are of a young age ,  the casting of muscly Terry Crews in the advertisement gives the customers the feeling that using the product will lead them to be as masculine or have some semblance of masculinity like the shirtless Terry Crews who is always seen to have his six pack chest exposed shouting into the camera with a loud and assertive voice, the choice to casts Terry Crews is most appropriate as his reputation is associated with sports due to his time with the NFL and masculine characters in TV such as a father figure in Everybody Hates Chris or a police man in Brooklyn Nine-Nine. 

In one of the advertisements Terry Crews is juxtaposed to another character who appears to be sick and dying away on a hospital bed where Terry Crews's strength and vitality is shown to be associated with his usage of Old Spice in an attempt to play with Binary Opposites, the sickly man is once again introduced later in the advertisement as a fresher and proper version of himself this time filled with life and energy announcing that Old Spice gives us 16 hours of freshness, this is an attempt to the viewer that you will also be fresh or unlike the sick and weak character and be as strong as the revived man and Terry Crews after having use Old Spice. 

Audience

The old spice Terry Crews campaign is seen by some as the ultimate parody to shampoo and deodorant advertisements at times seen as an example of Postmodernism due to all the rules it breaks

Shampoo ads that usually casts models in most cases those with fair skin praise the product and the models are directly portrayed to be satisfied with or receives positive side effects from the usage of such products, this leaves some people out as not everyone can relate to such attractive and mostly white models especially darker skinned minorities who might feel represented by Terry Crews. 

The usage of such an unusual celebrity who does not follow the traditional serious and rosy tone of a shampoo while making obvious hyperbolic claims such as "Old Spice Body Spray Is So Powerful It Can Block Out The Sun!- But Then It Gets Too Cold So It Makes Another Sun!" conveys to the audience that Old Spice's products are different from the rest of the market just like their advertisements.

Industry

The structure and presentation of the Old Spice Shampoo commercial plays on the repetitive and regimented format of a shampoo advertisement that has been witnessed on TV and other visual medias for decades at this point, this has allowed people to have an expectation of what a shampoo advertisement from old spice will look like only to see how some aspects of the shampoo advertisement genre is exaggerated and some made fun of, meanwhile Terry Crews at times breaks the 4th wall by entering another product's advertisement to advertise Old Spice which has at this point never been done on TV.