Kev Kennedy's Blog

28 blades later

The latest swathe of Gillette ads, featuring the clunking leaden-faced Tiger Woods and Roger Federer, along with Thierry Henry, who seems to have lost his charismatic ‘va va voom’, have hit the TV screen. And the ads are far from sharp.

In fact, razor adverts are the lamest of lame adverts aimed at men. Okay, partly that’s because the product is essentially quite boring. But last year Gillette tried to make out that using a razor with a battery in it was the equivalent of switching on the Large Hadron Collider. And now they’ve brought together two of the world's most distinctly uninteresting sportsmen with past-his-prime Thierry, in an abysmal mash-up of sports and shaving.

The basic premise of any razor advert is this: Now with more blades! More! Did you hear us? MORE BLADES! As if more automatically = better. But more doesn’t always = better. More work = not better! More axe-murderers = definitely not better!

And, seriously, how many blades do you need to shave your face? It’s the ‘closest shave ever’ (which they say in every round of adverts). Well, of course it is, you’ve just removed an epidermal layer. Do that often enough and you’ll be showing off the silky smoothness of your skull.

You don’t need to go out and buy a new razor, even if it does have MORE BLADES. Spend the money you save on something useful instead.
 

Created on Mon 23rd February 2009 16:01