Classic(ally Bad) TV Commercials: Roger Clemens is Clean!
“Zestfully” clean to be exact!
In light of the recent Mitchell Report, I’m sure Roger Clemens now regrets getting stuck in the rear with steroid needles. But after watching this commercial from 1987 I’m sure “The Rocket” regrets this performance even more.
The idea behind the “Zestfully Clean” campaign of the 1980’s was actually a very good one. A catchy jingle with “ordinary people” singing along made for a memorable campaign. Apparently by ‘87 the campaign was running a little stale, so the folks at Proctor & Gamble decided to spice things up with a celebrity hawking the soap. And who better to sell soap than a sweaty baseball player? Especially one like Clemens who was coming off a spectacular 1986 season in which his Boston Red Sox finished just one strike away from winning the World Series? But what could have been an effective ad campaign becomes just comical when you first realize Clemens is lip-syncing to some opera singer.
After the Clemens opener, we see the ordinary people, followed by a Clemens cameo as he flips his bar of Zest like it was an American Express Platinum card. The move just hollers, “Hey! I better get the best table in the house not because I’m Roger Clemens but because I use Zest dammit!” Then we see some beautiful women showering and singing together, which is just a beautiful sight made even sweeter by the fact you’re not paying $9.95 for it on SpectraVision. But before your soap bar hormones can get all lathered up, the “scientific” experiment on why you should buy Zest goes on.
The less-sexy yet somewhat reassuring older woman draws her figure in the window of a dirty shower door, suggesting all other soaps leave some kind of film behind that Zest doesn’t. Compelling, but do you know how much soap it takes to get that nasty residue on your shower door? I’d say at least a whole bar or two, which leads me to think if you’re using a couple of bars of soap every time you shower you have much more pressing issues than not being “Zestfully clean”.
We then switch back to our lovely dancing girls who get us all steamy in the shower again before the ultimate libido kill comes sauntering in as the fourth tenor. Yeah, ol’ Clemens not only sings the outcue of the jingle, he rather excitedly zips his “Zestfully clean” towel out, nearly showing off his puncture wound area, if you know what I mean. With Clemens gleefully stretching his towel out (and giving us the ultra-80’s nod when he’s done singing) we can clearly see that in 21 years he’s managed to put a few pounds on… naturally… of course.
Perhaps I should stop making fun of his Broadway performance here… he may beat me into submission. I think they call it “roid rage”.
