Look away. Look back. He’s on a horse, but let’s face it, I never looked away in the first place. That Isaiah Mustafa is near-mesmerizing in his manly shirtlessness for the OId Spice commercials. He is The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.
So I researched the guy. Not only did he play for the NFL, own a barbecue restaurant and win money on The Weakest Link, he has a girlfriend whom he says “will be after me, high heels in hand,” if he doesn’t let it be known publicly that he is taken. He finds this endearing. God, he’s awesome.
He answers fan questions via response videos, which he posts on Twitter and Facebook, utilizing social media to create a viral ad campaign that has helped sales of Old Spice products more than double. It’s advertising for a new generation, using newfangled mediums to rebrand Old Spice as something for cool young people with rock-hard abs. You don’t look like Isaiah Mustafa, you’re probably not as cool as Isaiah Mustafa, but you can smell like him, and that might be enough.
What I find interesting about this ad campaign is while it plays on the subconscious idea that all men want to be manly, chiseled and capable of jumping from horses to boats, the advertisements are clearly also directed at women. “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign implies that 1) Women want their men to be like Mustafa, and 2) They will go out and buy Old Spice products so their men can be one step closer to being as manly as he is. The implied ownership — “your” man — almost seems like a wink at women. Let boys be boys, let them think they’re in control, but behind the scenes, you’re going to choose your man’s body wash and deodorant and he will like it. The advertisement is clever in that it makes fun of the entire concept of being manly while managing to, somehow, please both men and women.
Another interesting thing about these commercials is they portray Mustafa as the ideal man, a tongue-in-cheek way of using a time-honored advertising technique that promises, “Buy this product and you will be/look like this.” Mainstream media has, in general, traditionally shown ideal men as white, while Mustafa is black. Is Mustafa’s race, when he is at the heart of a huge ad campaign, a sign of something? Has the fact that our president — the ultimate man in charge — is black changed the landscape of what the ideal man is, or could be?
I find the fact that these advertisements have been so popular socially encouraging. Perhaps a sign of new times, when men and women are equally targeted and all races are equally portrayed in mainstream media. Unfortunately, every man I know feels the need to quote Mustafa at all times. He’s on a horse, all right. A dead horse. That you guys beat to death. Beating a dead horse. See what I did there?
Swan dive.
Bethany Wynn is a senior sociology major. She can be reached at wynn at umdbk dot com.
