Things must be different in “Parts Unknown” than they are around here.
I know whatbody wash is. I have some myself (A: My wife bought it for me and B: I’m kinda a nancy boy). Scented. Unscented. If they call it body wash, it isn’t aimed at a lareg segment of men. If they wanted men to use it, they call it LIQUID SOAP. Just look at Dove’s commercial. I didn’t see any men. The team was right. Will and Grace demographic.
And just curious, why do you have the 11 out of 13 number about friends using body wash? That seems like an odd fact to have at your disposal. Usually it is 11 out of 13 dentists agree that chewing Trident reduces cavities…
Kristen reminded me of Marie from last season. She had the same deluded, self-centered intensity about her. All that was missing was the spastic blinking.
All right, I just watched the Yahoo videos and they confirmed what I remembered from last night. Chris’s protestation did not come out of nowhere; it followed The Hair basically asking him if he was gay. This is how it went down:
George asks Chris, “You’re sitting here all nice and quiet, and that isn’t like you. What’s on your mind?” Chris says “We were told to be as bold as possible, to think outside of the box. Ours may not be as bold, but we weren’t over the top in the homosexual connotation. I think that’s disturbing.”
The Hair says “Chris, are you not a homosexual?” and Chris practically shouts our famous catchphrase.
I’m not sure how to interpret Trump’s question. It came close to implying that Chris is gay, the rhetorical negative phrasing as in “Are we not men?” But it’s also quite possible that Trump meant something “Oh, so you find the gay angle disturbing; are you a not-homosexual, then?” Whichever way he meant it, he phrased it poorly, and I hardly blame Chris for getting a little defensive. But then I have a big soft spot for him and his blond hair, and his baby face, and that cute little scar on his upper lip … sigh …
Why should he get defensive? Is being asked if you’re gay an insulting question?
And what was “disturbing” about the gay connotation in the Magna ad? He seems to think that any depiction of homosexuality whatsoever is “over the to” and “distrbing,” and he blows a gasket if someone asks if he’s gay.
And also, he was the one who brought up homosexualty out of nowhere. Nobody else was talking about it. Even the Dove people didn’t say it was the gay thing that bugged them, it was obviously the cucumber innuendo that made the ad unusable.
Bringing up the gay angle as a non sequitur to tell everybody how “disturbed” he was by it and then EXPLODING at the question of whether he himself might be acquainted with Dorothy to me is bizarre and questionable to say the least.
No, of course it’s not insulting to be asked that, but it might be kind of awkward, I think, and it’s a pretty common reaction for straight guys to QUICKLY dispel any suggestion that they might not be straight. Not that it’s the most attractive motivation in the world to do so, I’ll give you that, but it’s very common.
I also was annoyed at his being “disturbed” by the cucumber commercial. The boy seems to be a closet case! Which, really, would explain a lot.
I’m certainly no pro, but here’s what I would have done:
A woman comes into her house at the end of a long work day. Following her are several people: characters she has encountered throughout a particularly pit-worthy day. All of them are carrying appropriate props, and are barking at her in unison, voice over voice, in a calamitous din of noise. There is her boss, who chewing her out. The snitty gadfly from accounts payable, who is bitching about procedure. The office playboy, who is whistling at her and flirting. The guy in traffic, who cut her off and is blowing a horn at her. And so on. Her face gains confidence as she moves through the house to the bathroom, dropping her clothes along the way. (Camera stays close in. No soft porn! :D) Characters continue following her.
She begins to shower, applying Dove Body Wash. As she rinses, the characters begin to disappear one by one. Poof! The boss is gone. Poof! The gadfly is gone. Poof! The flirt is gone. And so on. When she steps out of the shower, all is quiet, and all her problems have disappeared. She smiles contendedly.
Cute commercial, Lib! Conventional, maybe, until people start disappearing. And then there’s violent, self-indulgent pleasure.
I think Chris is used to people assuming he’s a homosexual, and he’s just damned tired of it. Just like he’s damned tired of customer service issues at Burger King, and whatever he was damned tired about last week.
Poor guy.
I don’t know whether Trump was calling him on his latent homophobia, or calling him on his latent homosexuality, or just being swept away by the momentum of the screeching. I don’t think Trump is the least bit homophobic, and he probably doesn’t want his employees to be, either.
Chris is toast, but assuming his outbursts stay confined to the boardroom, I hope he stays around awhile. Who knew straight-laced boy was more entertaining than guitar-man?
I agree. Donald had every opportunity to snort, chortle, smirk, or comment, and by his very silence on the issue, made the raising of it seem out of place and weird. Turning it back on Chris made it all about him, and not about homosexuality.
During the previous two seasons of “The Apprentice,” I found quite a few people to root for, and there were only a few that I couldn’t stand. This year, that situation is reversed. Maybe I’m just getting jaded.
Since I am a short, redheaded Southerner, I’ve got to cheer for Bren, and I kinda like Angie for no good reason, but, darnitall, is there anyone on either team who is really first-rate apprentice material for Trump?
I can sure envision an ending in which both the final two candidates are fired.
I think Net Worth’s commercial had potential. They could have have had the marathon runner splash into a mud puddle or something. The race is in the city…why not play up the construction dust and sooty air everyone associates with urban living? Zoom in on the beads of sweat on his hot bod. Emphasize the heat and physical exertion.
Instead of having the runner stop mid-race to lather up, why not let him first finish the race–winning it, of course. Then, instead of rejoicing in his triumph at the finish line, he runs all the way home to shower. We see him in the steamy shower, lathering up in his Dove bodywash. He returns to the race all clean and good-looking to claim his trophy. Contrast his appearance with the dirty runners still stumbling across the finish line.
It tells a story that makes sense and is both humorous and sexy. I agree with whoever said that Net Worth’s commercial was totally straight from a bad 80s music video. Sadly, I think if I had been on Net Worth’s team, Kristen would have not have let me get two words in. She had her “vision” of the idea and wouldn’t let go of it. She deserved to be fired.
The juxataposition of Magna’s soft porn video and Net Worth’s “elated man with white sticky stuff on his face” made things worse for both teams, I think!
haggard looking woman browsing down body wash/shampoo aisle in grocery store, bad lighting, she looks like shit, you know the story. She stops by the Dove Lime/Cucumber body wash, dully picks it up, flips open the cap and sniffs it. All of sudden she starts falling down a hole, rather like Alice in Wonderland, until she plonks down into a bright, white room (using film quality generally used with skincare commercials), in a fluffy white bathrobe, right on to a comfy spa bed/chair. An attractive female attendant puts cucumbers over her eyelids, a hot spa guy puts some drink with a twist of lime prominently displayed into her hand. The voiceover at this point (I don’t have the specific script) pushes three concepts-first, that the new bodywash still has the same moisturizing elements of the old Dove series (as moisturizer in their products is a big selling point with Dove), that the cucumber cools and relaxs as the lime simultaneously refreshes (fizzy!). All of a sudden the scene is broken up by the sound of a tot wailing and gnashing his teeth in a typically bratty way. The previously haggard woman lifts one cucumber off one of her eyes and looks at the hot spa guy, quizzically. He is massaging her feet and gives her a saucy wink. She tumbles up through the same hole she tumbled down through and the camera cuts to her standing in the aisle holding the bottle and sniffing it as real life (the kid screaming) goes on around her. She smiles to herself, puts the bottle in the cart, and walks away. She already looks refreshed, happy and smiling. “Dove Cucumber-Lime Body Wash, ‘Put the Fresh Back in Your Step.’”
My contribution, anyway. Liberal, I loved the surreal element of your commercial-the only thing is that the cucumber-lime concept has to be pushed as that was the entire point of the new product.
Heh, excellent point, though not one that could have been mentioned on network TV.
You know, working with the conventions of porn can work in a commercial. I think somone’s already mentioned that Herbal Essences does it all the time. However, Herbal Essences’s commercials:
-Don’t look like crap;
-Aren’t incredibly blatant;
When they hint at same sex porn, suggest girl-girl, which for some reason I don’t get, people find more acceptable than man-on-man action; and