Old Spice Advert Essay

Isaiah Mustafa is a sponsor for the Old Spice brand which has a range of male grooming products encompassing deodorants and antiperspirants, shampoos, body washes and soaps. On the printed advert, it shows a mid-close up shot of Mustafa merged with the beach with a volcano on top of his head and with blue skies on top of him. This is to resemble the Bahamas in the Caribbean so that it can initially catch the audience's attention. On the advert, it is written "Old Spice Bahamas scent comes from an antiperspirant mine in the Bahamas. This fact has not been fact-checked". This quote makes this a self-referential advert meaning that it is known that it is silly therefore it is a parody to other adverts as it refers to other men's toiletry advert. The advert resembles the landmarks of the Bahamas and referring itself to other adverts gains the advert intertextuality, making this a breaking genre as this breaks boundaries between genres. There are some postmodern theories that can be integrated into the advert such as McLuhan's Global Village Theory, which is the compromisation of time and space and mix and match between two different things (which is the Mustafa and the Bahamas). As this is a man grooming brand, there is always this stereotypical idea of it being used as a way for women to be attracted to the consumer, and this is with no exception with Old Spice, however, it does make fun of the idea. In the 30 second long advert, there are numerous of times when Mustafa said to the women look at their partners and then to look back at him and he is always doing another action where he could be dressed differently or in a different location for example. This could possibly hypnotise the consumer (which are men) into thinking that when they use the product, they could do those actions themselves or do even more and surpass him, as the advert gives them empowerment and authority to do whatever they want to do. Butler's gender performativity is used on this advert and it is that genders (particularly men) are created in how we perform our gender roles and that it is created through performance. This reflects on the performance that is created through Mustafa; how men are stereotypically fit so that they can be shirtless and show off their six-pack abs and them having the capabilities to do anything and this is an example of hegemonic masculinity.