Last Updated on: 26th May 2020, 06:28 am
I feel dirty linking this video, but some of you may have been lucky enough not to have seen it to this point and writing is all about context, so here it is.
Listen, Dove. I like your soap well enough. Irish Spring is my personal favourite, but my mom’s house has been a Dove house for years, so I end up using your product quite a bit when I’m there. It’s pretty good. does the job. I use it, I feel clean, everybody’s happy. And that shampoo you’ve come out with isn’t too shabby either. Carin came home with some a few weeks ago and we both quite like it.
But we need to talk, because not everybody is happy anymore.
I understand why you came out with your line of DOVE MEN+CARE guy soaps. As much as I hate it, marketing is what it is and everybody’s gotta make a buck. I get it. But seriously guys, man hide? That’s not only marketing at its worst, but it’s also pretty gross.
Man hide, as a phrase, will never catch on with regular people. Ever. Anyone outside of your company using the term is either a giant douche, or has recently been coughed on by a giant douche and contracted a case of giantdoucheitis. This is not just my opinion. Everybody I’ve mentioned the term to or watched your commercial with has the same basic reaction.
And that’s the other problem. Reactions. Man hide? Man hide. Man…hide. Let those words bounce around your brain for a few seconds. They’re kind of disgusting, aren’t they? Man…hide. When I hear man hide, I think not of rugged, manly men working hard on the farm or cutting down trees and then coming home for a nice, moist shower, but rather of wrinkled, chafed nutsacks. Causing visions of some dude’s ballbag and the sugarplums swinging within to dance in my head is a poor way to sell me on something. I’m being 100% honest when I say that the term man hide often stops me in my tracks for all the wrong reasons. When I have to put a task on hold so I can gag for a second, that’s bad. And when your ad comes on while I’m eating hotdogs, that’s even worse. And again, that’s not just me.
I’m begging you, please stop. I visit my mom a lot, and I’d like to be able to shower over there without blarfing in the tub because of the soap she chooses to use. Your commercial is ruining people’s enjoyment of cleanliness in much the same way as Subway ruined eating a few years ago. Please, let’s just retire this whole man hide thing and market the stuff as soap. Everybody needs soap, just tell me in simple terms why I need yours. That’s all a real guy wants anyway. We don’t need fancy gimmicks, especially not vomitous ones like friggin man hide.
