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Comment by hugh3 | Hacker News Reader

I enjoyed the Old Spice ads so much that I considered going out and buying some just as a way of saying thanks. Call it a charitable donation to support the arts.

(I still haven't actually bought any, though, as I still can't get over my mental image of Old Spice as "really cheap cologne.)

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Have you considered that maybe it's not that Old Spice is really cheap cologne, but all the other stuff is stupidly overpriced cologne? The fact that most of the mainline colognes bear the name of extravagant product lines or music superstars should be a clue.

As an example to support my argument, I'm in the process of making a classic cologne that requires some alcohol, (preferably very hard alcohol), some things from your spice cabinet, a few leaves, and more alcohol. I decided to grow my own leaves, and thus am currently in the 'grow the tree phase', but really that's not even necessary.

I want my cologne to be associated with expensive stuff, not economy.

I want my cologne to be associated with expensive stuff. I don't want my cologne to be expensive stuff.

If you use enough cologne that you actually care how much it costs, you're using too much cologne, and I can probably smell you from here. A decent bottle might cost you sixty bucks, but it'll last years. Pennies per use.

I generally don't use cologne. =) But your point still stands, and is an interesting way of looking at it.

I guess it's a case of not knowing if their really is a difference between the expensive stuff and the cheaper stuff.

I would rather my cologne made me smell good/pleasant, than wealthy. Wealth may well be a selection criteria, but I've no interest in trying to play that card.

I'm sure that expensive cologne is stupidly overpriced, though I do think it smells better than cheap cologne, and members of the opposite sex seem to agree, and at the one-small-bottle-per-decade rate I seem to go through it I really don't think it's worth economizing.

Still, if you want to do double-blind experiments on Old Spice vs Christian Dior vs your leaves-in-alcohol by spraying young men with each and seeing who attracts more women, I'll be interested to see the results.

The question is not really economy, but whether inflated prices cause us to erroneously believe it is a superior product.

That would be a very interesting trial. I haven't even the faintest clue how you would determine whether the scent was causing the man to smell sexy vs good/pleasant though. Or maybe those are one in the same, I don't know.

I just use their body spray as deodorant because my body doesn't freak out over aluminum ingredients which is found in almost all solid products (causes me to sweat excessively)... I also find the brand more timeless, a lot less obnoxious than AXE which just screams Ed Hardy.

ps. The markup on cologne/perfume is ridiculous, it's liquid gold and why so many celebrities release their own variation. Your impression of cheap is simply defined by luxury pricing and marketing.

These ads certainly had better aesthetics than most, but something dies inside me when an advertisement is considered art. I also don't understand why you would view buying Old Spice as a charitable donation.

The whole thing with "support companies you like, provide positive feedback to business models and ideas you support." If you, as a consumer, support a method of advertising and want more companies to do it in the future, there are two main ways of encouraging it: writing a letter, or buying the product. Writing a letter and not buying the product encourages them, but doesn't factor into cost analyses; buying the product factors into cost analyses, and both writing a letter and buying the product (and mentioning that you bought it because of the advertisement in the letter) provides ammunition for anyone at the company who supports the advertising method.

It's like the people who spent upwards of $500 on the Humble Indie Bundle: providing positive feedback to encourage things like it to happen in the future.

Treating it as a donation doesn't make sense, of course, and I have to agree that advertisements shouldn't be considered art, except in the most dramatic examples. Perhaps the meaning of art is a bit narrow, though; advertisements can certainly be artistic.

If you think Old Spice makes excellent deodorant, body washes or whatever then by all means support them with your wallet. But why buy a product just because you liked the commercial? I just see that as being suggestible.

People didn't spend $500 on the Humble Indie Bundle so they would put out more ads did they? They wanted to support indie games, no?

I don't think anyone purchased their product just because of the commercial. Rather, these are individuals who possibly did in the past purchase Old Spice products, or Gillette products, or other well known brand name products they trusted. Now, when they go to buy these products again, they make a choice for Old Spice. A product they already like, but never made a real choice to buy.

The commercials and publicity put Old Spice in their mind when they went to buy that type of product.

Old Spice isn't trying to prove it has a good product. We know that. Rather, it's reminding us to make that choice Old Spice.

On a good day, advertisements are as legitimate an artform as anything subsidized. How is a major corporation funding an ad really that different from commissioning a sculpture or a painting?

Take, for example the Philips "Carousel" Ad[1], which was for all intents and purposes a high-budget short film that happened to be paid for by Philips as a way to promote their support of the depicted cinematic aspect ratio.

They aren't all cinematic genius, but it's tremendously disingenuous to write ads off entirely due to some perceived taint associated with selling a product.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carousel_(advert)

I respectfully disagree, but I also acknowledge that this it is a very subjective judgment. Maybe I shouldn't pull a Roger Ebert and try to argue that something isn't art only to get flamed to death. But for me, personally, even if there's a lot of craft in an ad, to me it's still and ad.

Cheap cologne with hormone disruptors. Have fun not being able to have kids if you wear it.

Can you explain this at all?

Old Spice contains chemicals called phthalates that bind to your estrogen receptors. Exposure to these chemicals is essentially like taking a low-level version of the hormone replacement therapy that transgendered people (sometimes) use. Among other things your sperm count dramatically drops and the sperm you have left are much less viable. Exposure to chemicals like those found in Old Spice are primarily why 1 in 5 couples are now considered infertile. (Even though the government keeps changing the definition of infertility to mask the massive reduction in reproductive viability, so in reality it's actually much worse than even the already shocking 1 in 5 statistic.)

If you want to know more check out this video:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=375127

I remain skeptical of the claims of "random internet guy" that "commonly used household product" is (without doubt) causing "horrible disease" and that "ban-happy government agency which is in charge of these sorts of things" hasn't got around to doing anything about it yet.

Well if you had already read the academic literature for yourself then you wouldn't have to rely on a "random internet guy" for your health information. But if you're not willing to actually read the primary sources, the best you're going to get is second hand information.

edit: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1280349/?tool=pm...

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Estrogenic-Phthalate-Esters...

if you had already read the academic literature for yourself

The burden of proof is on you, and you have yet to cite a reference :-)

Or did you just want us to do our own research, and somehow find that paper, which you might be talking about and come to an agreement with you?

I have enough trouble keeping up with the academic literature in my own field, I'm not going to monitor the toxicology literature as well just in case. I doubt you do, either.

Anyway, while I'm perfectly willing to accept that phthalates are dangerous in sufficiently large quantities (this holds for pretty much any organic chemical) I remain unconvinced by the unproven assertion that it holds a significant risk of sterility when applied externally to the skin in small quantities in the small concentrations present in cheap cologne. Alcohol is also present in colognes, and that's well known to have all sorts of bad effects at large dosages.

I'm also skeptical of the even broader claim that exposure to phthalates is why one in five couples is infertile. Infertility has a zillion different causes, from Robertsonian translocations to endometreosis, and is a common human problem dating back to antiquity (see, for instance, the Bible, where every second woman is apparently infertile, at least until God shows up).

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