An ad that’s been running on television for Just For Men Beard Dye has made my eyes roll for a long time, and I’ve just got to speak up now. This is taking the same tack as the stupid old beer commercials that act like if you drink the beer, you’ll get tons of chicks and get laid all the time. Sure, Axe Body Spray does the same thing, but at least it’s on a grand, epic scale, and it’s entertaining (and it’s obviously ridiculous). But this Just For Men Beard Dye ad is just insulting.
The ad shows some guy with a gray goatee try to be nice to his hot young Hooters-waitress neighbor while he’s cutting his grass, and she gives him the brush with an eye-roll chaser. Then these old guys in a Just For Men van that looks like a pervert’s ice cream truck tell him to use Just For Men Beard Dye. I think they’re all former sports stars or something, since they use sports metaphors throughout the spot. Anyway, he stains his goatee with the stuff, and all of a sudden, the girl next door has the whole staff from Hooters doing his yard work in skimpy outfits while he sits around on his ass in a folding beach chair sipping iced tea or whatever it is.
Okay, so this is dumb, and insulting. If this guy is a rich, famous athlete, he’d get all the girls anyway (if they knew who he was); if he was some other guy of the same age, just some average guy (no matter how handsome), the girls would assume he was a creep and reject him anyway, so why bother with the beard dye? I mean, let’s get real here.
But this isn’t as bad as another ad for the same product that was running a year or so ago. This ad was really ridiculous! It shows some guy taking a date back home, but she rejects him for a kiss on her doorstep because he’s got salt & pepper stubble. So the guys in the Just For Men pervert stalker van show up and peer-pressure him into staining his beard with Just For Men Beard Dye. Then the next shot shows him at his date’s doorstep again, but this time, because he has tricked her into thinking his beard isn’t salt & pepper (She must have a really short memory, this one.) anymore, she drags him into her house with a super-frisky look on her face. And of course the stalker guys in the van high-five each other, celebrating the fact that now they can film whatever happens through the window on a video camera and put it on the internet. (After all, why else would guys drive around a suburban area in a van helping strangers get laid? Think about it.)
So here’s my problem with this ad: This woman is so vapid and superficial that his personality doesn’t matter at all. Even the same guy she rejected before is fine now that he’s stained his razor stubble. Ridiculous! I don’t think there are actually many women out there that are that obsessed with stubble color vs. personality or (more importantly) wealth, but let's assume for the moment that there are. And let’s forget the fact that this woman already knows that this guy had gray beard stubble from the last time she went out with him. For all intents and purposes, this is a new date, or a second date (or whatever), with the same guy with the same fake-colored beard stubble, okay? Okay. So here’s my problem now: If she drags him into her apartment for sex, isn’t she going to notice that his chest hairs, underarm hairs, pubic hairs, etc., all have gray in them? So what happens when she unzips his pants, and tufts of gray pubes come popping out? Does she feel that same sense of revulsion as before and throw him out? Does she get mad about being tricked with the beard dye into thinking he’s going to have the same hair color all over? Or is she going to say, “Oh, what the hell. You’re already here, so it’s too late to kick you out now. I might as well sleep with you.”? She might do the latter, but then isn’t she going to tell everyone about it and start a bunch of gossip? Or maybe you’re supposed to dye all of your body hair with the beard dye.
It just seems like they could try to make some extra coin by selling you Just For Men Chest Hair Dye, and Just For Men Pubic Hair Dye, etc. They could just keep showing new ads where the same guy gets closer and closer to having sex with her, but she discovers a new patch of gray hair somewhere and kicks him out again. Then, naturally the perv guys are waiting outside in the van, and they trick him into buying a new Just For Men hair dye product that’s specific for use on some other type of hair (whatever she kicked him out for this time). See? They could make an unlimited amount of money from gullible guys this way! (The stockholders demand it!) But the ads would still be silly and unrealistic.
I think a more convincing way to do an ad like this would be for an investment house to show the guy, after making a pile of money with them, getting dragged into his date’s house for sex. That would at least be believable, since he's obviously successful and wealthy. But how could she tell? Maybe he carries around his stock statements on his laptop or smart-phone. (You can tell I’m new to this stuff.) Yeah, come to think of it, this could be a great ad to twist into use for Scott Trade or E-Trade, right? The guy’s checking his holdings all night, and his date notices, and so she knows he’s successful. Then they could have him have a gray goatee and still get laid (thus invalidating the need for Just For Men Beard Dye)! Hey, it might work! And this might help explain how the E-Trade baby got that way. See?: He takes after his dad!
