Ad of the Day: Old Spice Perfects the Stupid-Funny Parody Jingle in NFL Spots

Here's a sentence I never thought I'd write: The bar for deodorant ads has gotten really, really high over the last few years.

Don't look at me. I didn't decide this was the category that needed really absurd comedy creative. But Procter & Gamble's Old Spice has proven remarkably game throughout multiple campaigns from Wieden + Kennedy, and its directors—in this case, Steve Rogers of Biscuit Filmworks—have been correspondingly willing to let their freak flags fly.

Old Spice just released four new 15-second spots for the NFL season. First off, these are really funny ads. "Snow Globe" may be my favorite, but "Absent" made me laugh really loud at my desk just now, so that's got to be worth something. It's interesting how directly these spots, done in the same style as W+K's recent Old Spice bar-soap ads, make fun of a specific kind of creative—basically everything with a choral jingle over an otherwise-silent CPG spot in the 1980s. Musically, they're all dead on.

They're kind of perfect for ad nerds, actually. Remember the Doublemint ads where everybody loaded their gum into their mouths in exactly the same ridiculous way? Right, OK. Now, see how these guys sniff the deodorant sticks in exactly the same ridiculous way no one has ever sniffed a deodorant stick (in public, at least)? That's some deep CPG ad knowledge right there, my friends. Learn from it.

That, ultimately, is what makes these ads so good—they're super-accurate pastiches of a specific kind of ad with one huge, horribly wrong difference. You may not know all the little ins and outs of the parodies—I'm fairly sure I'm missing several—but we've all seen somebody transported to a beach by the taste of his beer/smell of her laundry detergent/experience of sucking Cheeto dust off his thumb. Yet for some reason, lizards are never eating that guy's legs, as in the "Lizards" spot, although Wes Welker of the Denver Broncos will probably never catch another forward pass now. (The other guy in the ads is New England Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo.)

Really, if you think about the number of inexplicable beachside teleportations that go totally well, this is just the law of averages finally working itself out.

CREDITS

Client: Old Spice

Spots: Snow Globe :15 | Lizards :15 | Absent :15 | Coach :15

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.

Creative Directors: Jason Bagley | Craig Allen

Copywriter: Nathaniel Lawlor

Art Director: Croix Gagnon

Producer: Lindsay Reed

Producer: Jennifer Fiske

Account Team: Liam Doherty | Nick Pirtle

Executive Creative Directors: Joe Staples | Susan Hoffman

Head of Production: Ben Grylewicz

Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks

Director: Steve Rogers

Executive Producers: Shawn Lacy | Holly Vega

Line Producer: Jay Veal

Director of Photography: Ben Seresin

Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors

Editor: Adam Pertofsky

Asst. Editor: Marjorie Sacks

Post Producer: Julia Batter

VFX Company: The Mill

Head of Production: Arielle Davis

Producer: Christina Thompson

Coordinator: Ben Sposato

Creative Director: John Leonti

Shoot Supervisor: John Lenoti | Narbeh Mardirossian

Visual Effects Supervisor | Lead Flame Artist: Tim Davies

3D Lead: Lu Meng-Yang

2D Artists: Ben Smith, Narbeh Mardirossian, Adam Lambert

3D Artists: James Ma, Thomas Briggs, Mike Di Nocco, Jason Jasnsky, Brian Yu

Matte Painter: Daniel Thron

Music: Libman Music

Composer | Arranger: Paul Libman

Record | Mix: Avatar Studios

Engineer: Jay Messina

SFX Studio: Lime Studios

Sound Designer: Loren Silber

Color Transfer: Company3

Artist: Sean Coleman

Producer: Matt Moran