A satirical blog about media, marketing, advertising, politics, pop culture, etc. All references to actual companies, products, people, etc. is for the purpose of parody. All writing is copyright by Greg Medernach, and is mostly intended as absurdist humor, and as a portfolio of comedy and creative advertising material. Questions and Comments: unconditionedresponse@yahoo.com
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Antiperspirant "Murder My Sweat" Ad (Proposed)
In a 1940 noir detective movie-themed scenario (shot in black & white), a detective sits in his office, completely bone-dry on a hot, humid evening despite the temperature (an evening that shows other people pouring with sweat out on the sidewalk and inside the office building where our heroic detective has his offices), and in the snappy dialog of a Dashiell Hammett/Raymond Chandler novel, we hear our hero recount how he came to be so sweat-free, in a TV spot entitled: "Murder My Sweat" (A joke on the title of the movie version of Raymond Chandler's novel "Farewell My Lovely", which was retitled Murder, My Sweet because the movie studio worried that the book title would be misinterpreted as the title of a Western movie, and would hence leave audiences frustrated by what they might consider false advertising.) And we go back into a narrative flashback showing what he's recounting, and we see the story of a woman who hires our gumshoe protagonist to solve the mystery of why her brother, whom she has recently seen after many years looking completely dry and smelling fresh on the hottest of days, which concerns her because her memory of her brother was that he always sweated profusely and smelled of underarm odor. And so our shamus investigates his client's brother and finds that it is, in fact, the same man, and that he's been transformed since his sister last saw him into the dapper, fresh-scented, dry-armpitted gentleman that he is today because he began using (whatever brand of) antiperspirant. And having solved the puzzle, he reunited brother and sister, and refused payment from the latter because he says he had discovered something far more valuable: how to stop his profuse and malodorous underarm perspiration, or, in other words: "Murder My (that is, His, the detective's) Sweat". And naturally, all through the flashback scenes we see our heroic private dick character pouring with sweat as he traverses the stifling city pursuing his investigation; and in the final scene we return to our detective wrapping up the story in his office, looking completely clean and dry, as in the opening scene. And then he opens his desk drawer to retrieve an example of the antiperspirant the ad is for, and he hands it to a previously unseen, profoundly sweaty person who he's been speaking to this whole time (when all along we thought it was us!), and as he hands this new client the antiperspirant, he says: "There, go clean yourself up and get all dried out." And so apparently he was hired by another client on a case regarding profuse sweating, this time to help the client solve the conundrum of how to stop his own underarm perspiration and body odor.