Remember the old spice ads with Isaiah Mustafa, a campaign playing on suave and sexy so well that I wanted to marry it until they ruined it all with Fabio. This campaign, while clearly a tad inspired, isn't even good enough to be the rebound date. Zesty guy is eye candy. Because girls like salad. And pretty boys. Look, using pretty ladies as eye candy in ads is ungood, and using pretty men as simple eye candy isn't good either. Two wrongs don't make a right (but two Wrights can make an airplane). There's a balance of humor, or emotion, that needs to be reached for the character to evolve beyond the rock-hard abs, now he's just an object. It's not as if this is an unusual idea, to have men as sex-objects, and bringing them to social media is par for the course. There's Gorgeous man on facebook, now there's The Zesty Guy on twitter (not to be confused with The Zesty Man who has nothing to do with it and probably refused selling his user name). The Zesty Guy will respond to your tweets with a flash of his perfect abs, and it all feels a bit Coca-cola light to me. You see, unlike Old Spice mens stuff using Isaiah, it's not a groundbreaking strategy to dangle a pretty boy in front of the target market of ladies (and pretty boys who like pretty boys). Can we make him eat yogurt next? How about bathing in it? Or maybe we can squirt it on him, oh wait that's been done on ladies and fined for obscenity. Ok, maybe not. The Zesty Guy is of course going to respond to us on social media, just like the Old Spice guy did - but will we want to play with this guy who doesn't even respond to a joke? He's not even on a horse yet. If Mr Zesty doesn't raise the level of humor, I fear we have a watered down old spice on our hands, popular with the Bravo crowd because sixpack.
@thezestyguy Are you Zesty as in Zestfully Clean? I don't like soapy salad dressing.
