If there’s a Christmas ad cliché more prevalent than the touchy-feely supermarket campaigns so crisply lampooned by Lidl this year, it’s the pretentious perfume ad. You know the sort of thing: a Hollywood star mumbles cod-philosophy while a jewel-encrusted leopard considers a swimming pool.
Brut’s ad begins with a spoof for ‘Ineptias for Men’, which comes packaged in an alarmingly phallic bottle. But who better to disrupt proceedings than hardman footballer-turned-actor Vinnie Jones? “Oi! Cut it out,” he barks at a voiceover artist. He urges viewers to “forget all this nonsense and use your nut. Actually, use your nose! Cos that’s what it’s all about.”
An argument for those posh scent ads is that you can’t describe smells on TV, so it’s all about brand ‘feel’. Vinnie doesn’t get lyrical about the finer points of Brut – “it just smells good”, he tells us – but it’s a perfect fit for the brand, and it’s funny. As Vinnie says: “No messing about.”
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