So somewhere on this site I’ve said that I’m willing to review products that are sent to me. This is for one major reason: I like getting free things. I am not at all ashamed of getting free things or being sent free things. If Apple wants to send me an iPad, I will review the fuck out of it. If the New Zealand Board of Tourism (or whatever they have. Presumably they have somebody who does tourism stuff) wants to buy me a trip to New Zealand to review, well, New Zealand, I am totally on board with that. I like getting things for free.
I mean, recently Torontoist was contacted by Kia Motors, who offered to send somebody to South Korea to review the new Kia Driveycar or whatever they made this year. Torontoist ultimately turned down the opportunity because they couldn’t find any reason the story was Toronto-related. I was all “but I’m from Toronto, surely that should count,” but ultimately journalistic integrity won the day because they are boring people with sticks up their asses who won’t let me go to South Korea to drive a car around a stunt track and do awesome skid turns. (I assume I would get the opportunity to drive the car around a stunt track and do skid turns. I mean, you got to figure Kia would want me to say nice things about them.) So you know I’m entirely willing to engage in the review process.
But I’ve got my limits. I say that right up front: I’m not going to be your marketing partner. If you want to send me something, that is awesome and I will review it in good faith and with an open mind. But guerrilla marketing is not something I engage in for anybody who is not me.1 If I get your product and I think it is shit, at best I will just not mention it on the site (and you’d have to be, like, really nice and send me homemade cookies because you’re so happy that I’m reviewing your thingy to get me to do that), and at worst I will say exactly how shit it is. That’s my line of integrity, right there.
Anyways. During my intense studytime, I was surprised to see this in my inbox:
This might be out of left field but I have a post idea I wanted to run by you. It’s quirky but something I think your readers might enjoy!
This opening is pretty common; I get a fair number of people who want me to post their Youtube or talk about their site. Sometimes I actually do it if I like whatever it is they’ve done. Not often, but sometimes.2
I want you to share your power anthem! Your anthem is an event or experience that changed you. It can be anything but I was thinking perhaps a wild night or a special event that changed you forever and left you feeling less than squeaky-clean. It can be anything so use your imagination. The point is, no matter what goes down AXE can fix you up.
Yes, that would be AXE as in “the crappy line of men’s beauty products.” People my age will remember that, when they were teenagers, Old Spice was the scent of desperate boys trying to get laid and who thought Old Spice would make them smell manly and intoxicating, rather than smelling like Old Spice. AXE is, more or less, this generation’s Old Spice, except instead of selling it with an aura of sophistication and dignity, they have gone with “we’re the brand for douchebags” as their selling point. Of course, AXE does reasonably well in the marketplace – or so I understand – so who am I to criticize them selling stuff to douchebags?
Of course, that is not the problem currently facing me right now; I don’t have to smell AXE. I am just reading an email and trying to figure out what the fuck this marketing campaign is supposed to be. As near as I can figure out, Marketing Person is asking me to take a bad experience and… use it to help them sell AXE. I don’t quite get this. “Hey, remember that time in your life when you were totally down in the dumps and feeling like a shitburger? We can use that to sell our product!” This makes no real sense as a marketing campaign to me.
And how is this a “power anthem,” anyway? I mean, when I think “power anthem,” I think something like this.
That is a power anthem. How does a bad time in my life have anything to do with Stan Bush? Stan Bush is all about the awesomest times in your very existence. Stan Bush is the radical kickflip that is your life. Sometimes, when I am depressed, I imagine what life would be like if I were Stan Bush, or maybe Rodimus Prime. Both are pretty much more excellent than anything you could possibly imagine.
Where was I? Oh, right. AXE. Okay, really, AXE is talking more about “hey, remember that time you partied so hard that you puked all over yourself and then you puked on your date and your date puked on the big guy and then the big guy puked on himself and he was so mad about the puke that he beat the shit out of you but that didn’t matter because you were already unconscious because you’d passed out because you’d partied so hard” variety of bad experience, the sort of Plan 9 From Outer Space or Manos: The Hands of Fate equivalent of so-bad-it’s-good experience. But these, too, are not power anthems. As was just cited, power anthems are so tubular that they force you to describe everything exclusively in parlance that either originated in the Eighties or was popularized at that time.
Confident your readers are interested in learning about your power anthem here’s what I hope you’ll be interested in doing:
First off, I’m pretty sure that if I stopped talking about comics which suck and/or rule that ninety percent of you would probably go find something else to read and most of the rest of you would only stick around in the hope of seeing El Tyrano Magnifico again.
But secondly, who the hell is interested in hearing about some distant-past emo dark time or pukefest in somebody else’s life? I mean, I don’t want to hear about emo dark times in the distant past from people I actually know and like in real life. (I’ll listen, of course, because that is what friends do, but I sure don’t look forward to it, and if you do you have issues.) And pukefests are all “you had to be there” things because we’ve all done it at one point or another and the minute details of the event are only funny to other people after the fact when you lie like a motherfucker and you’re all “oh man Stitz and Weasel and I we went out and we got so wasted that we stole police cruisers and we raced them through a stripmine and we each picked up a stripper then we drove the cars into the lake and the strippers drowned but it’s all good because they were also international drug dealers so the police gave us a medal and then we puked on the commissioner’s shoes, but he was totally cool about it and then he invited us upstairs and we got even more hammered on his private stash of Glenfiddich.”
But wait, what are they interested in me doing?
– Share your personal anthem on your blog
…I thought I was supposed to start off by doing that? What is up with you, Marketing Person? Do you expect me to tease this shit out? Like, on Monday i’ll be all “hey guys I’m going to have a total POWER ANTHEM post for you tomorrow” and then on Tuesday I go “sup guys, POWER ANTHEM is delayed until tomorrow, in the meantime here is a picture of Jughead eating a hamburger,” and then on Wednesday I drop the POWER ANTHEM post and it’s about how when I was in high school this one girl told me I’d never get laid because I was too weird,3 but that doesn’t matter because AXE products make me smell like a frathouse after it’s just been cleaned because everybody’s parents are visiting the next day.
* Encourage your readers to share their own anthems for a chance to win a Flip Camera from AXE. This way they can capture their next wild experience in real-time. Feel free to share the video link with them to better explain what an anthem is.
I am not sharing the video link with you. It’s about this guy who goes to a party and gets wasted, and then he goes to a motel and has kinky sex with a kinky girl, and then he has a shower with two hot chicks and then gets the crap kicked out of him, and in between he showers with AXE. If I showed you the video link, I am fairly sure I would be causing a spike in suicides.4
But besides that, they’re asking me to ask you to tell me about emofests or puke adventures. Who the hell does that? Do they even read this blog? We’re fucking nerds. Every story would have Stormtroopers in it.
* Get your readers talking and we’ll send you a basket of AXE shower gel line-up and 2 Flip Cameras – one for you and one for a lucky reader.
See, now I know one-third of you are totally going to be all “dammit MGK I wanted a Flip Camera,” but Flip Cameras are dogshit cameras for bad people, and I know that most of you are not bad people. But what really irks me is that AXE here is asking me not only to whore my blog out for a basket of shower gel I don’t like and a shitty-ass camera I won’t use, but they’re asking me to do it on contingency. Kia Motors was willing to fly me5 to motherfucking Korea in the hopes that I would say nice things about the Kia Driveycar but AXE isn’t willing to send me $500 worth of shitty phones and shitty shower gel unless I prove to them in advance that I will suck their marketing dick, and that I will do so to their satisfaction to boot.
Needless to say, I ignored the mail, because of all of the above and also because I thought passing Business Associations might be a good idea so that law school was not a complete waste of time. But then, a couple of days later, they sent me another email.
Just sending a quick follow up note to get your thoughts and feedback on the proposed blog post idea.
Dude. I hope you do not do online personal dating or anything like that, because when somebody ignores your initial post, it’s practically never because they missed it, no matter how many times you might tell yourself otherwise. It’s always for one simple reason: they are not that into you. Because you are in marketing for a career, this is probably even moreso the case. I was just going to be all “fuck it,” and just delete the email and move on, but then you had to bother me again. And this is what happens when you can’t let something go: you get mocked on a B-level nerdblog!
HOLY SHIT I DON’T BELIEVE THIS UPDATE: I was just checking my email as I am wont to do and Marketing Person emailed me again.
I just wanted to touch base one final time to see if there is any interest in this AXE sponsored story and FLIP camera giveaway.
This is after I just spent a thousand words or more trashing his marketing method, the product he’s trying to market, his idea for marketing that product, and Flip Cameras. I am just totally blown away, I really am. I mean, is he gonna keep going? Is this really the one final time he contacts me? Or next month is he going to suggest that I hold a “totally awesome” essay contest about how much you all love Crest toothpaste, and offer to send me a bucket of Crest plus two Razor phones, one for me and one for one of my readers?
- Coming soon: viral Youtube campaign designed to get me an articling position and/or a gig at Marvel! Actually, possibly both at once. [↩]
- And then, of course, there are the people who just want me to talk about Power Pack. [↩]
- This did not in fact happen. I am making a point. [↩]
- Or, alternately, you would band together to find the guy in the video and beat the shit out of him. [↩]
- Well, theoretically. [↩]
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49 users responded in this post
You’re B-level now?
/I keed I keed
Also, needs more El Tyrano Magnifico.
Dude, you totally should have got Flapjacks to do a post about AXE. Or about Kick-Ass. Or Power Pack. Or all three. Really I just want more Flapjacks…
Power Pack? Lame. The cool kids read Sonic.
I would gladly purchase shower gel that made me smell like El Tyrano Magnifico.
This one time I got totally smashed and puked on a stormtrooper and got sent to the spice mines of Kessel. It was worth it.
“You’ve run this organisation right into the fucking ground, Hot Rod!”
I just saw mention of El Tyrano Magnifico and I got excited. Then I reached the end and alas, no El Tyrano Magnifico.
I’m sad.
P.S. Please tell El Tyrano Magnifico I said hi.
P.S.S. And ask him if he wants to come to my birthday party.
Kia Driveycar. Best model name I’ve seen in forever.
El Tyrano Magnifico does not need AXE!
Axe was the nasty stuff my college roommates use to spray on each other as a prank. One spritz made us all gag, so we had exactly one can, just for that purpose.
Then my brother got a giant box of Axe, and we had no idea how to handle it. One can was a way to mess with each other. 40 just seemed too cruel to be true.
People my age will remember that, when they were teenagers, Old Spice was the scent of desperate boys trying to get laid
I remember Drakkar Noir being the miasma of choice.
Every story would have Stormtroopers in it.
This is, of course, completely untrue.
Some would have Batman.
Doesn’t Axe know that you’re a grown-up? And that even grown-up douchebags wear stuff that smells nice from Abercrombie & Fitch, and only 12-year-old douchebags wear AXE, and since you are not 12-years-old or a douchebag, a basket of AXE is more of a threat than an incentive?
Just watch out for the Muscle Milk ads.
“Yes, you are a total useless douche, but use our product and get studs/babes* draped all over you.”
* Depending on your preference.
I still want to see a picture of Jughead eating a hamburger.
I’ve always preferred “The Touch” over “Dare,” myself.
The worst part is, the guy who sent you this is going to write up a vaguely worded report for his boss, who doesn’t really get this whole “interweb advertising” thing, or he’d be doing a rather more professional job of it himself.
He’ll say you ran a blog post due to their request (technically true) logging so many hits and cite the general site traffic level, and claim a success. He’ll probably get a bonus. And if you didn’t follow up about the cameras and the “gift” set, well, that’s really too bad, and entirely not his fault.
Oddly enough, Axe was on the news this morning. Seems Darwin Award wannabes everywhere have discovered the stuff is flammable when freshly applied and , well, Fire! Fire! FIRE!
It seems to be a minor Youtube sensation, at least until someone gets really hurt.
I wear AXE occasionally, but only because the fiancee actually likes it.
“AXE: By Douchebags, For Douchebags!”
I’ll add my voice to those Tyranitos crying for the return of El Tyrano Magnifico, who surely needs no scent beyond the musk of righteousness!
Oddly enough, Axe was on the news this morning. Seems Darwin Award wannabes everywhere have discovered the stuff is flammable when freshly applied and , well, Fire! Fire! FIRE!
It seems to be a minor Youtube sensation, at least until someone gets really hurt.
They just learned that? I knew that in 1995! Great mosquito repellant.
I kind of toned out after the Stan Bush song, because its hard to go back to talking about deodorant after hearing something so awesome.
But yeah, Axe. Definitely a product for douchebags. And yet, some girls do like it. Strange but true.
Somehow, I don’t think you’re getting the camera.
That whole thing just reminds me of something Joey Comeau wrote in one of his Overqualified letters:
“I send out application after application, looking for work in the marketing departments of big companies, and I don’t have the right degree. I don’t have enough experience. And then I sit in front of the TV and holy shit every commercial is so bland and toothless and ineffective. If these commercials are the product of those degrees and that experience, then I hope to fuck I never acquire them.”
I honestly have a hard time believing a prescient human being wrote those words in the E-mail and, having done so, expected that they would be effective.
And yet, you have posted an entry on your blog that mentions AXE 15 times. (Yes, I counted.)
Well played, AXE marketers, well played.
This all makes a bit more sense once you understand that the french company that owns AXE and LYNX and ALLCAPSDOUCHEWASH and other such “grooming” products recently won legal ownership of, and the global rights to all incidents of, the concepts of misery, despair and skeeviness as part of an overarching marketing strategy that will link their artificial canned odours with such experiences and emotions.
Presumably the plan is to make it so that every single time you experience a moment of despair, misery or witness something really fucking skeevy, you’ll then be reminded of how much you’d rather have armpits that smell of the never changing stench of the latest AXE or LYNX or CAPSLOCKDOUCHEWASH rather than experiencing whatever major life crisis you are in fact going through, thereby turning despair itself into an advertisement for Le CAPSLOCKSTANK plc. Products.
I’d try to be snarky, but right now I’m kind of awed by the sheer amount of funny in one post. Welcome back, MGK.
My brother has said on more than one occasion that he has never met a woman he’d consider remotely dateable who wasn’t given a headache by AXE instantaneously.
Just thought that stood mentioning.
Dear MGK
Please post more Power Pack.
I recently saw an Axe product that alleged to be the “scent of rare leathers.” One can only hope that means it smells of Triceratops and Hippogriff.
When we went out shopping with such purchaseables in mind, my 12-year-old stepson stopped in front of the antiperspirants/emollients/condiments arrangement at the grocery store, and went “Hey! I want to get Axe!”.
My wife and I explained to him that their commercials were obnoxious, dumb, and horribly objectifying of women (which we then also explained; this is a kid who gets the concept, even if he still (*HILARIOUSLY*) calls it ‘being sextist’), and therefore he could get Axe only when we had fallen prey to the Ultimate Sanction, i.e., death, and he had clambered Gollum-like over our crumpled corpses to reach their product.
He said “Oh. … Okay.” and picked a different antiperspirant.
Hey, not to mention the really complimentary commercials they put out — Women: They will uncontrollably throw themselves at you just because *you smell good.*
@david: Yeah, and some girls like douchebags. What’s your point?
Ooooooh, AXE liiiiiiiikes you! I bet that marketing guy tells people that he totally has a client, but they wouldn’t know him, because the client’s in Canada.
I used to hate AXE, til I realized it was a plot to make guys wash more often. Now if only somebody would just make a product line that had decapitated body parts and weapons on it, that’d be awesome.
Data point: I would still read even if you stopped writing about comics. But then, I would wear AXE if I had reason to believe the girl I was pursuing liked the scent, so my opinion counts for little. (I even know that Tag smells better. THE SHAME)
100% props for using Dare over The Touch.
I’d like to point out that my fiance does like the smell of axe, but that just means that *she* wears it, not me.
When I was a teenager, the guys who were desperate to get laid wore Brut. It was ghastly. The first time I smelled a guy wearing Brut, I was really confused as to what he’d been doing that would make him smell like that. I thought maybe he’d had some kind of accident with cleaning fluids or something, and he didn’t have time to go home and wash it off. It never occured to me that someone would smell like that on purpose.
Fun fact:
Axe was developed from chemical weapons the U.S. confiscated from Saddam Hussein.
Wait, you DON’T want to hear about other people’s pukefests, then?
(Passive aggressive voice:) Well! I guess I won’t bother sending you that e-mail about what happened to me on opening day for The Corpse Bride, NOT THAT I MIND EVEN THOUGH I ALREADY WROTE IT AND IT’S RILLY RILLY FUNNY.
@Gloria: No point really. Just sort of weird/gross is all.
I’d suggest you reply and just include a link to this article to see if he replies asking where to send the bag of crap.
I’m sure he just got your address on a list that some intern handed him and likely has never read nor has any intention of visiting your site, so if you sent a link he might assume you posted without bothering to check, just to reach his quota of 25 packages sent out to various bloggers.
On the other hand once you acknowledge them, they’ll never leave you alone. Another lesson from internet dating.
I use AXE deodorant just because Old Spice smells like my grandpa. And not the live one.
So, the big takeaway here is that you want all of us to know that Kia wanted to send you on a trip to Korea. Got it.
Reading the request, I THINK they’re trying to define “power anthem” as “night you lost your cherry”. The “wild night that changed you”, where you partied [or other euphemism of your choice] so hard that you might need to clean up afterward…
So I don’t think they’re as confused about “power anthem” as they are about how to communicate.
Not that it excuses them their myriad other offenses, mind you.
I automatically assume that anyone who says, “My fiancee/girlfriend like AXE/TAG,” that they have a real significant other the way *my* pet bear wouldn’t ever eat me.
An anonymous female student at my University once took out an ad in the campus newspaper BEGGING the male student body to quit using AXE in the locker rooms and reeking up the kinesiology complex. I think the words “for the love of all that is good and holy” may have been used.
I hate it when marketing idiots decide words mean whatever they want them to mean.
I also hate AXE just based on their advertising. Next time I’m in a store that sells it, I’m going to make a point of finally finding out what it smells like, just so I can differentiate douchebags who smell disgusting because they voluntarily applied AXE to themselves from douchebags who smell disgusting for other reasons. Now I know to bring a barf-bag with me. (Now I also know why those “cleanup on aisle 5” announcements are for the HBC aisle so often.)
@Fred Davis: “ALLCAPSDOUCHEWASH” is genius, sir. Pure genius. Why isn’t there body wash that smells like *you*?
Utter failure at marketing, or clever guerrilla ploy by AXE’s competitors?
Damn you MGK! I have been totally ear-wormed by that song ever since I read this post.
*shakes fist at MGK*
BAHAHA ALLCAPSDOUCHEWASH! I lol’ed! Also lol’ed at the opportunity to smell like ancient leathers such as Hippogryphs. Teehee. That said, AXE is an older product no? I remember the first smells not being horrible or having douchetastic commercials. It still gave me a headache (I’m allergic to almost all smells like that) but it didn’t smell asstastical. I agree it does now =/.