Over the weekend, I spent some vacation time with my family, some members of which are part time farmers and rarely take their manure-ridden boots off when entering a house. YUCK!
Imagine my surprise when one such agronomist was gathering his items to shower and had bottles of Aveda Shampure and conditioner in his hand. So, wait a minute, you can’t take your poopy boots off in the house but you use great smelling expensive shampoo? I got a good chuckle out of that all weekend and was not at all surprised to subsequently hear a report on NPR about liquid body soap out selling bar soap for the first time in history.
The main reason… male consumers. Turns out that men want to get clean AND smell nice. Take the family farmer; he works outside, gets dirty and sweaty and is surrounded by malodorous creatures. So washing away the grime and stink is a nice treat at the end of a day of hard work. It is a concept most of my female friends have known for years and it is about time that men catch on.
The magazine Advertising Age has reported that sales of bar soaps have fallen 40 percent since body-washes were introduced. So, what does that mean for the soap industry? Well, since the manufacturers of bar soap also make bottled body-wash, and body-wash is more profitable, they will spend money advertising what works and right now. Guess which one that is. According to that same NPR story, young men are more impressionable than their fathers (go figure) and are impressed by “great” scent, which, they believe translates into sex appeal. This is apparently what the soap companies are capitalizing on and what has made it more pleasurable to be downwind of certain members of my family.
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