Old Spice believes that having a deodorant with a great smell is not enough to start using it—sometimes, it simply gets lost in a bathroom or a suitcase or its packaging is so slippery that you just can’t grab it. So, the brand is launching a new accessory, the Bear Deodorant Protector, which will help men always have their Old Spice ready to hand—starting today, November 23, the new offering is available for just $19.99. The new item looks so meaningless, that it seems to be just a joke. But no, “this product is real and is available for purchase” from Facebook, says the promotional video, which plays up the retro vibe. And when you don’t use your antiperspirant in the new case, you can just look at the bear “as long as you want until you need more deodorant.”
The bizarre infomercial features an old men, who appears in the video both as a product demonstrator, a host and ‘consumers,’ wearing various outfits (he even stars as a lady and a teenager). The promotion is developed by ad agency Wieden + Kennedy, which is behind the most successful campaign in the brand’s history, ‘The man your man can smell like,’ and a number of Old Spice’s recent marketing efforts. The product will be sold via the brand’s Facebook fan page, which now has over 1.7 million fans—by the way, the page still has the Mano a Mano in el Baño hub with the video featuring Isaiah Mustafa, who regained the crown of Old Spice Man from Fabio (another retro hero) this summer. This weird product joins the list of absurd, but actual offerings, which includes the AXE Detailer shower set presented last year and the barbecue-scented cologne launched by Burger King back in 2008.
Last week, the brand released another commercial of the ‘Smell Better Than Yourself,’ launched in September. The new spot entitled ‘Motorcycle’ features a fat guy who gets rid of its fat and quite ugly husk (it just cracks and falls down) by just smelling the Old Spice Swagger—the scent magically transforms him into a biker. “The scents of Old Spice turn embarrassingly normal guys into face model champions who smell like adventure and fine cutlery. So douse your body regions with the scents of Old Spice and ‘Smell Better Than Yourself’,” says the description to the video.