Anyone see this particular commercial that completely sets me off? The message is something to the effect of “Will she still feel the same way if you lose your hair?” “Yes, but she’ll feel it about someone else.”
What’s the REAL fucking message here? Bald guys can’t have meaningful relationships with women? Would the folks who make Rogaine have us believe that a perfectly loving spouse will instantly start looking for a trade-up in her romantic life as soon as her man starts showing a little hair loss?
I’m not bald, but I’m showing a little thinness up there. I can understand it if someone wants to take a little pride in their appearance and try to stave off male pattern baldness for a bit, but if Rogaine wants to try to make the male population feel anxiety because they’re not using enough of their expensive hair goo, I salute them with a giant middle finger.
I’d like to grab a fistful of this stuff and cram it down their marketing director’s throat, applying it liberally to his pancreas, just to see whether it can grow hair on internal organs.
Oh, but they are! Bald on top, with a mustache and goatee…makes me melt!
JFTR, I hate that ad, too. It reminds me of an old colored contact lens ad that implied if all those ugly brown-eyed girls would just buy some blue contacts, they could get a man.
a buddy of mine was a voice actor and dj in vegas. he used to do the ads for the hair clinic. i would laugh like a motherfucker when i heard those ads on the radio, cause this dude was the hairiest fuck i knew, and i could picture him in his little booth doing these ads for hair growth shit, and the sound engineer not being able to shut the door cause of his body hair…
any vegas dopers out there? i bet you would recognize this guy…
I don’t get the anger this ad causes. It’s the balding guy who says the “With somebody else” line. This is obviously meant to represent the insecurity many bald men already feel. If your bald and happy, then the ad isn’t for you. Plus, the wife right away says, “Don’t be silly. And if it bothers you that much, either try Rogain or stop whining like a little hairless bitch.” (I’m paraphrasing here) It’s an annoying ad, like most ads, I just don’t see the offense.
Of course, I’m not bald myself, and not likely to ever go bald. I come from a long and matrilineal line of men with full heads of hair. [Nelson]Ha ha.[/Nelson]
It makes men – “Oh, no, I’m losing my MANHOOD along with my HAIR!!!” – and women – “If he loses his hair, I’m outta here!” look incredibly stupid. I wouldn’t want anything to do with either of these people in RL.
They should see the way my mom drools over Patrick Stewart and reconsider their position on baldness, even if they are in the business of selling Rogaine. Honestly.
I hate my hair and would gladly go bald. It would be an improvement. I’d shave it except it would grow back, and that’s too much trouble. There is no history of baldness in my family, alas. If anyone who is terrified of going bald (or preferably already bald) wants to trade, I’m more than willing.
Jonathan Chance, I agree that maybe this tactic might work somewhat for Rogaine, but I think it could backfire. One of the weaknesses of the broadcast model is that it tends to treat everyone the same. Sure, Rogaine might reach plenty of people who are insecure about their hair loss, but they’re also reaching folks who are not insecure, and are resentful of that assumption (like me). You might say that secure men aren’t part of Rogaine’s target, but what about the case of someone that might not be considering Rogaine now, but might later? IMHO, marketers make this mistake all too often - caring about the here and now and not the future. If, one day, I decide “Hey, this hair loss thing is starting to make me look like a dweeb with a reverse mohawk,” I’m less likely to consider Rogaine. After all, they insulted me earlier with a commercial suggesting that women don’t find me attractive. Personally, I think the commercial could have been easily handled in a way that wasn’t insulting, but still played on insecurity. If I were their marketing director, I would have asked that the agency copywriters take another stab at it.
And I would have, too. But there’s nothing more insulting about that ad than there is about peddling the belief that beer will make supermodels want to have sex with me. Or that other men will be intimidated because I drive a corvette.
Heck, I’m going bald myself. And you don’t see the ad working on me.
But the insecure need a little motivation to buy. They’re just to unreliable to make the decision themselves. That’s what marketing is all about.
No, marketing is about creating and developing markets for a product, with the end goal of selling more of it. Any ad that insults people who might be in a given target market does not support the overall marketing objectives and shouldn’t be a part of a campaign.
I see a big difference between the Rogaine ads and the beer and car ads you describe. Beer ads link sex appeal to use of the product in a positive fashion (e.g. - “If I drink this stuff, models will think I’m attractive.”) The Rogaine ads go a step further - “If I don’t use this stuff, people won’t find me attractive.” It’s a subtle difference, but I find it insulting nonetheless.
And yes, I do find quite a few ads (beer ads included) to be somewhat insulting to people’s intelligence, as in “Holy shit, do people actually believe that drinking Budweiser over Heineken is going to get them laid more often?”
