Long legs and skimpy bathing suits. Tropical islands. The goddess in you.It all made me gag. Talk about mindless manipulation. As if a razor were going to make a beauty out of me. I was way too smart to be snared by that kind of baloney. So I avoided the Venus razor out of principle. Fluff was not going to sell me.
Then I actually tried one, mainly because my daughter's was hanging around the bathtub. (Don't tell her. I'm counting on her not reading this blog. LOL) And didn't the darn thing work better than mine?
So I guess I'll go buy one.
In all those years of mindless advertising, why didn't they ever tell me it would actually shave better and give fewer nicks? That is a pitch I would have been interested in.
I know they will argue that the mindless stuff works. Well, maybe, but not on everybody. Couldn't they occasionally make a pitch that actually engages a brain or two?
The website where I pinched the picture (it's free advertising, Gillette, but I'll take it off if you want) is equally gag-worthy. The theme song rendered in pre-orgasmic groans. For a razor. The only other pitch that approaches this level of ridiculousness is all those toothbrush ads riffing on epic thrillers. And they wonder why I quit watching TV.
10 comments:
"Couldn't they occasionally make a pitch that actually engages a brain or two?"
No. That would be too easy...
Janna, advertising is almost exclusively aimed at teenagers and young adults. Therefore advertisers target hormones. The reasoning is that older consumers are locked in to product choices already and are less accessible to advertising. The corollary to this is that programming is geared to attract advertisers, leaving very little for those of us who want something other than a constant appeal to hormones.
You'd think they could throw the rest of us a sop now and then. I truly gave up on TV altogether. I just don't have the time to sift through the dreck and put up with the tacky ads.
I LOVE Venus razors! I recently had to switch to regular disposables because they are freakishly expensive here (if you can even find them) but I still have one left that I'm holding on to. I don't know why I do that, but I hate using the last one.
I agree that the ads have to go...
Melanie, I'm not holding my breath for Gillette to take me on as a marketing consultant, or for them to even come across this blog post. (Get your family to send you blades in care packages.)
LOL - you have a good point. Then again the commercials for men's razors where they do the EXTREME close-up of the razor slicing down the single hair is also disturbing in it's own way.
Kate, if we started making a list of disturbing advertising, we'd never be able to keep up. ;o)
I remember buying a Venus razor when they first came out and blue was the only color they had. Now there are several colors. Anyway, I bought it because I heard it was a smoother shave, etc. I seem to have skipped the whole not-knowing-the-truth thing through poor advertisment for the benefits of buying the product. Maybe they figure everyone knows now?
My first exposure to the razors was the skanky ad campaigns on the love goddess theme. I haven't seen any others. But they turned me off so badly from the start, it was almost impossible to get my attention after that.
I am admittedly a very difficult person to market to.
I have a Venus razor, but I haven't opened it yet. I got mine free as part of some kind of promotional campaign, and I got the men's version (what's it called?), too. My husband's been using that one and loves it. Me, I'm still using my old chunky purple Schick--I love it. And when I stopped being able to buy cartridges for it in the store, I bought a bunch on Ebay. Haven't run out yet, so I haven't opened the Venus. Maybe I should anyway, eh?
I'm a great believer in "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." But my razor was obsolete, I was down to the last couple of cartridges, I was increasingly unhappy with it, and I had an alternative to try for free.
If I were you, I'd save it for the day I ran out of replacement blades for the old one. (LOL. Like you really need my advice.)
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