Stay Tuned/Circularity Irish Cleaning Mascara OTC

As of about three weeks ago, I have resumed my traditional habit of perusing the miscellaneous Sunday coupon and advertising circulars for signs of mild insanity. I have not suffered for want of material. I have a stack here now which is large enough to demand being handled in several installments.

Sometimes I feel like it's too easy a target. As I've noted before, these aren't intended to be the cream of the advertising crop; they're more vulnerable to McLuhan's "conscious consumption" than average. They simply don't withstand close scrutiny. And, frankly, in a coupon section, what is the budget anyway? Why expend a lot of cash on a decent bit of advertising when most of the people who see it are only looking at the coupons?

One of these days we're going to look into the economics of these coupon circulars. But for now, let's have some nuttiness and snark.

First off, an item in honor of St. Patrick's Day, a holiday which gets minimal handling from retailers. (The ecumenical cycle of the retailer begins with the Feast of St. Valentine, then Easter, then the Holy Days of Grilling and Suntan Lotion, then All Souls Eat Candy, then Christmas. There is not much room for anything else except an occasional turkey and baking supplies promotion in November.)

Here I have an ad for Irish Spring Body Wash (Colgate-Palmolive). Irish Spring, of course, is a famously odd attempt to connect a product to an unrelated concept - I mean, there is nothing inherently Irish or springlike about either the product or its distinctive scent. It's just something they trumped up because they couldn't find a better way to describe the smell. It's no better or worse than other soap names, which historically have been nonsequiturs (Coast, Dial, Lux, Tide, Gain) or outright nonsense (Duz, Dreft), but it is the only one which mentions a real nation full of real people, which means sometimes they go a little overboard in trying to emphasize that link.

All the Freshness of Ireland. Bottled.

Now, see, I thought that was Guinness wot had that.

I would be amiss if I didn't also direct you to their new web site (the soap's, not Guinness'), which is simultaneously annoying and amusing, but does have sheep. You'll want the sound on for it, if you dare.

Speaking of things which are simultaneously annoying and amusing: Like many other folks, I have enjoyed being appalled by the television antics of Billy Mays, the loud, hyper-energetic pitchman for OxiClean and other not-so-fine products. But I always figured OxiClean (and its sister products, Orange Glo and Kaboom) were strictly infomercial territory, which is why I was surprised to see them turning up in actual stores and with actual print advertising - you know, like a real product and not just something that is "only available if you call right now and we'll throw in a bonus bottle for free."

Well now. It turns out that OxiClean and Friends are made by Church & Dwight. And what's interesting is that when you click the link on the bottom of the main OxiClean page that says "View other Church & Dwight brands," what you get is a page that lists that family of brands but does not say, or even imply, that Church & Dwight might have ... other products.

Sure, the focus of the OxiClean site (and a similar site it links, greatcleaners.com), is cleaning products. So I can understand not putting Nair or Trojan condoms or Arrid anti-perspirant on there. But where is the whole Arm & Hammer family, most of which is cleaning products, and which is one of the most recognizable brand names in the world?

Hmm, could it be that the OxiClean stuff is being pitched to an entirely different market segment? And if so, what segment is that? And why does it feel a little more unsavory somehow? (Apart from the fact that OxiClean is a little bit of a fraud - it works, when it works, by releasing hydrogen peroxide into the water and thus bleaching out stains - along with your clothes.)

L'oréal has always been a weird place - the only cosmetics company recognizable to the average American consumer that does things The French Way, which is to say, sometimes in outer space. I have an ad here from them which is for new Telescopic Mascara ("Lengthening And Lash By Lash Intensifying Mascara") and the following delightfully bizarre copy:

The flexible precision brush
works at the speed of light.
In a stroke, it lengthens
lashes by 60% for
lash by lash intensity.

I keep a list of brief notes for items I want to write about here. My note for this one read "L'oréal Carl Sagan Mascara."

However, L'oréal is also a European-run company, which sometimes means it is willing to take chances an American cosmetics company would not. In the same set of circulars there was an ad for their Men's Expert line, which had two products being gripped in the jaws of pipe wrenches and the caption "Introduce his skin to a new set of tools."

What's interesting is that the products are an anti-wrinkle "lifting" cream and an "anti-lines" moisturizer/sunblock. Although American men are manifestly, if secretly, interested in anti-wrinkle snakeoil, most American cosmetics companies have been extremely leery of marketing to men at all outside of a few known "safe" products (scents, shaving preparations, et al), so this is moderately daring of L'oréal.

Final tidbit for today is AdvilPM (Wyeth). For some reason sleep aids are really big business right now, or at least have been heavily marketed in the last year or so for some reason, and everybody wants onto the bandwagon, apparently. The sleep aid in AdvilPM is diphenhydramine, which tells me that the mix-n-match OTC drug game continues apace since the last time I wrote about it.

I didn't expect people to take my advice then, and I don't expect them to take it now, but here it is, just for the record: It is probably cheaper, and infinitely more customizable, to buy a bottle of generic ibuprofen and a package of generic Benadryl-equivalent and do the math yourself. 200 mg (the amount in one AdvilPM caplet) is a pretty standard dose of ibuprofen; the FDA says 50 mg is the maximum recommended dose of diphenhydramine when used as a sleep aid (although other countries allow as high as 100 mg). Above 100 mg may cause delirium and toxic effects on your nervous system. This has not been a recommendation from a medical professional, and is presented without warranty of any kind, so don't come after me with any liability. I'm just trying to save you some cash. Why do people still buy non-generics for OTC drugs?

and now back to our program

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