Old Spice: Need to dominate

In the men’s locker room at LA Fitness, Old Spice tries to capitalize on males need to dominate. They have posters with extremely strong looking men advertising their new soap that is supposed to be stronger than ever. Especially in a gym where testosterone is bouncing off the walls the need to dominate is very prevalent in this ad.

The ad shows Old Spice’s new soap being presented by a strong, long haired, oiled up man, who looks as if he could win a gold medal in Olympic weight-lifting, holding the soap. These ads are on the side of every locker as well as in the shower.

At the gym there are two types of guys. The first being the veterans of lifting or body building who are very competitive and already sculpted to look like the guys in the Old Spice ads. The ads will appeal to the men because they already have the need to dominate hence why they are at the gym seven days a week and consume 10,000 or more calories a day. Old Spice would be stupid not to try and capture these guys with this technique. The next group is the dreamers. These guys dream of getting sculpted bodies like the ones in the ads but either don’t have the time or will power to get in shape like the rest of the meat heads. These are the ones who are even more vulnerable to Old Spice’s muscular ads because they think maybe using that specific soap will help them achieve what the other guys in the gym have. Where as the guys who are already built are probably slightly less likely to be victim to the advertisements because they already have what Old Spice promises to give them.

Overall, Old Spice is trying to take advantage of the gym goers need to dominate. This is a great place for their advertisements because almost everyone in the locker room is part of their target audience. I think if Old Spice continues to advertise in expensive gyms and exercise clubs this will increase their sales.