Today’s episode: “Scent technology”

Recently, I picked up a bottle of Red Zone, a men’s shower gel from the makers of Old Spice. Normally I’m a bar of soap and washcloth kind of guy, but due to a coupon/rebate combo this particular shower gel was practically free. Not quite as good as completely free, but still pretty good.

The next morning as I was taking my shower, I took a closer look at the product container. (By the way, does the phrase “taking a shower” make any sense at all? For the one who’s showering, there’s no “taking” involved in the process whatsoever. You don’t keep any of the water that sprays on you, and in fact, in the washing process, it actually takes microscopic bits of you with it. Then again, “taking a shower” is much less disturbing than the phrase “spraying down my lumpy, naked body,” so we’ll go with it for now.)

Anyway, examining the label to see what made this particular shower gel so special, I noticed this blurb underneath the Red Zone logo: “8-hour scent technology.”

**Snicker**

I get the point they are trying to make: this wondrous marvel of modern hygiene supposedly makes you smell good all day. But “scent technology?” IT’S A SHOWER GEL.

Granted, some advertising is built on overexaggeration and hyperbole. And it’s not the first time I’ve seen the word “technology” applied to products that have no mechanical, electronic or digital components of any kind. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still try to figure out why exactly it makes sense to people. Heck, if you want to go that route, I have built-in scent technology, too. The difference is that mine is powered by Taco Bell.

I suppose the important thing for Old Spice is that having a silly-sounding product descriptor hasn’t stopped me from using Red Zone each morning. Perhaps one of these days I’ll give myself the sniff test about 3:30 in the afternoon and see once and for all whether I should boycott it based on their 8-hour claim. But chances are even if I do find that my less-than-perfect body chemistry has caused a critical failure in the scent technology’s fragrance-emission systems before its 480-minute runtime has elapsed, I probably won’t complain too much.

Well, assuming I can get it for practically free again, that is.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 11:44 am and is filed under Creative. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.