Common scents

If you follow the auto world you’ve noticed that retro is popular, especially when it comes to classic muscle cars. The Dodge Challenger, Ford Mustang and Chevy Camaro are three examples of old muscle turned new again. The ’70s played a role in these histories, not only due to car design, but also because of muscular marketing. It was a creative era, piping pitches for everything from fast cars to cheap cologne into America’s living rooms.

The car ads are well-remembered, often discussed, and still studied. But how about the cologne?

Well, that’s worth a look, too.

If you’re selling a car, you can show how impressive the car looks, just as if you’re selling tropical tourism on Saipan you can show how beautiful the beaches are.

But how do you describe a smell?

Apparently, you don’t.

None of the ads that I remember tried to describe a smell, at least in anything but the most vague terms (e.g, “manly”). The sales pitch was all about image, portraying the product in a scene a viewer might want to buy into.

I was too young to be in the target market for fragrances during this period, and I can only reflect on the ads I’ve seen and recall, which is surely a mere fraction of the overall action. Still, any marketing that sticks in your head for a few decades has got some real punch to it, so it’s better heeded than ignored.

An old-school brand that kept its stride in the ’70s was an aftershave called Aqua Velva. It’s still around and sold in drug stores starting at under $5 a bottle.

I can’t even remember where I put my checkbook this morning, but the Aqua Velva jingle from decades ago comes easily to mind: “There’s something about an Aqua Velva man.”

The TV ads I remember seemed to be pitching to regular guys. Baseball legend Pete Rose starred in one ad, singing a little ditty along with some other at-the-ballpark kind of guys. It was a little bit hokey, but this gave it a hometown charm.

Aqua Velva was probably in your father’s medicine cabinet and maybe in your grandfather’s, too. So I surmise that it didn’t have to sell its way into your family, since it was already there. It seemed like it just wanted to remind you that it was still around and still one of the guys.

Meanwhile, another product, also for men, is forever associated with this era: Hai Karate cologne.

If one goal of advertising is to attract attention, well, Hai Karate did get plenty of that.

From what I remember, the brand seemed to be built around pure shtick. The TV spots I saw featured a somewhat geeky guy. The Hai Karate he’s wearing triggers a lust-frenzy among proximate females. The guy resorts to using karate to evade the women.

If that trajectory didn’t make sense to you, well, don’t worry, it didn’t make sense to me either. I understood that the ads were hyperbolic farce for the sake of attention, but, even making that allowance, I didn’t see a likable aspect to the concept.

Of course, what I thought, or didn’t think, was of no consequence in the broader market. I have no idea if Hai Karate was a money-maker or not. But, whatever the legacy is, the sun long ago set on it, so we’ll move on to other things.

Which brings us to a brand that is still going strong: It’s a line of women’s fragrances and bath products called Jean Nate (pronounced in the fancy French way: “na-TAY”).

I don’t recall any TV ads for it, but that doesn’t mean it was weak in the marketing realm. It had a very powerful presence, due in part to a deceptively simple concept: colors.

Jean Nate’s “trade dress” (packaging) was yellow with black writing. These colors got ample shelf space in drug stores and department stores.

If you needed to buy a gift, you’d (a) head to the store, and (b) look for the yellow-and-black color scheme. Jean Nate products came packaged in individual units and in a variety of gift sets, so a gift-giver had a wide spectrum of options. Prices these days run about $8 to $25 in the examples I looked up.

I remember standing in the yellow glow of the Jean Nate section of the store as a kid, clawing the quarters out of my pockets, tallying up the value, then picking out a gift for Grandma.

Anyway, I’ve mentioned three brands, but I’m saving another one for another day, at which time we’ll look at what is surely one of the best TV ads ever aired.

So: How do you sell a smell? If you can answer that, you can probably sell anything. It makes selling tourism on Saipan seem easy by comparison.

Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at EdStephensJr.com. His column runs every Friday.