Old Spice - Rocket Car / Smell Legendary #smellegendary (2016) :90 (USA)

The man with the chiseled chin and just there moustache is back, not playing tennis on a whale this time, but testing limits with a rocket-car in the desert. A homage of course, to the crazy people who break land speed records, most recently British Royal Air Force fighter pilot Andy Green who clocked 1223.657 km/h (760.343 mph) in the black rock desert back in 1997. The man with the chiseled chin ponders what limits really are, and if he should have taken some engineering classes, but then "if you fill your brain with knowledge, then there won't be any room for dreams". He's a himbo! Pretty but le dumb, y'all! And proud of it! Unlike the trying to hard whale-ad, this works much better, as when the rocket-car built by an idiot invariably explodes in a fireball, our hero is also watching through binoculars. Perhaps the other ad suffered too many chefs, but this one stayed on course.

See also the dirt destroyer infomercial parody, from the same misspelled hashtag campaign: #smellegendary - a new portmanteau of words that'll have spelling-nazi's twitching every time they check twitter. By the way, the rocket car scenario is popular in Adland, we've badlanded a pair and Budweiser tried it in 1980.

Client: Old Spice
Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks/Revolver
Director: Steve Rogers
Managing Director: Shawn Lacy
Executive Producer: Holly Vega
Producer: Pip Smart
DP: Mandy Walker
Production Designer: Leon Morland