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Old Spice’s disgusting campaign on Yahoo! Sports

Back when I worked on My Yahoo!, one of my projects was to create ad quality standards. Users were generally displeased with seeing an LREC (the standard “large rectangle” ad you see on so many sites) where they used to see their own content, so we had to be sensitive to what users were experiencing in that spot on the screen.

We certainly would not have approved this:

Disgusting Old Spice ad on Yahoo! Sports

(Click on it to see its gory detail.)

This is the Old Spice campaign currently running on Yahoo! sports. The LREC (which is animated) shows what is supposed to be a very hairy armpit crusted with chunks of antiperspirant residue. (One of the chunks falls and crushes a car, for some reason.) This campaign fails for two very obvious reasons:

  1. The LREC: This may say more about me than the ad, but when I saw the LREC, my first thought wasn’t “armpit.”
  2. The “takeover” portion: Anyone who enjoys seeing their browser’s vertical borders covered in crusty armpit hair, raise your hands.

I have a pretty strong stomach, but I am repulsed. Is it just me? Or is this an ad standards FAIL?

This entry was posted on Monday, August 3rd, 2009 at 2:08 pm and is filed under The Biz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Old Spice’s disgusting campaign on Yahoo! Sports”

  1. Mark Says:
    August 4th, 2009 at 6:54 am

    So – I saw the ad too… and I too immediatlely saw something other than armpit hair. And I too found it to be a tack and somewhat inappropriate ad. But c’mon – were you REALLY “repulsed”??? Did you look at it, take a doubletake, make either an “eeewww” sound, or giggle a little, then get your panties all in a bunch AFTER the fact? I’m only asking because people seem a little uptight these days – publicly complaining about things that privately make them laugh, and blowing things way out of proportion. My 2 cents.

  2. Eric Says:
    August 4th, 2009 at 8:04 am

    Yes, I was pretty repulsed. I think it’s the crusty residue peeling off those, um, armpit hairs that really does it to me.

  3. steve Says:
    August 11th, 2009 at 11:14 pm

    yeah, i agree. i came across this blog on google just to find anyone else repulsed by this, every time i go on ign.com i see this and it makes me want to vomit.

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