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...is about soap.
Or rather, it is about the absence of soap. You walk into a chemist these days and pick up the average squeezy-bottle of what appears to be liquid soap. You read the label:
Gentle moisturising hand-rinse with vanilla scent.
Excuse me? Hand rinse?! I don't want my hands rinsed, I want them clean! The above description makes absolutely no claim that this will occur; am I actually buying soap or some sort of beauty product that's been placed in the wrong aisle?
It may be a shock to find out, Mr. Advertising Executive, but when the average man goes to clean his hands his main concerns are not:
- That the cleaning process will go easy on his poor delicate hands.
- That his hands will continue to be moist even after vigourously drying them off with a towel.
- That they smell as if he has been raiding the freezer for ice-creamy goodness.
Believe it or not, the main concern of anybody — even women! — after they have been to the bathroom is getting the nasty stuff off.
Which means they want SOAP, dammit, SOAP! Just because it has four letters does not make it a dirty word!
I mean, honestly! In the end I picked up a pack of Imperial Leather bars, because it had the word "ORIGINAL" on it, which implies that it is in fact the same product as it was when it was advertised as 'soap'.
It is in fact soap — I discover this just now — because it has 'Toilet Soap' in very small, shameful letters on the back in the mandatory goods description section. Oh, that and listing its main ingredient as 'Sodium Tallowate'. 8^)