Brut lives! Just check out the Sun Bowl
I walked into the Sun Bowl media room Monday and grabbed the usual assortment of materials. Press guides. Interview schedules. OU season CD. Sun Bowl notebook with no lines, which is spiffy for drawing but not so great for writing.
And a small paper packet of Brut after shave, in the shape of a Brut bottle.
Call the bowls a monument to marketing. Like someone in a chat said during the 2008 Brut Sun Bowl, when posters debated the political correctness of some Brut commercials: “I didn’t even know the damn stuff was still around.”
Brut was big when I was a kid. Provocative commercials — “after shower, after shave, after anything.” Exotic catchphrase — “Brut, by Faberge’.” Hall of Fame cast of endorsers — Joe Namath, Hank Aaron, Wilt Chamberlain, Muhammad Ali.
I hadn’t thought of Brut in 20 years until it signed on to sponsor the Sun Bowl. That’s what marketing is all about.
I once abhorred bowl sponsorships, just because of the name bastardization. Some of the bowls migrated away from their roots. For instance, there is no Peach Bowl anymore; it’s the Chick-fil-A Bowl. I love me some Chick-fil-A and wish I could cover that game, because a bunch of chicken sandwiches on a table are a lot more appealing than tiny little packets of Brut. But still, the Peach Bowl sounds way better.
There is no more Citrus Bowl. It’s the Capital One Bowl. Bowls named after financial services are a little tacky during this economic downturn, don’t you think, since they helped fuel the collapse?
The Motor City is now the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl, the Tangerine is now the Champs Sports Bowl, the Copper is now the Insight Bowl.
Some bowls are just total sellouts to commercialism. Forty years from now, guys from Pitt and North Carolina will have to tell their grandkids they played in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
Some bowls toss out official names that require two breaths just to say. Advo Care V100 Independence Bowl. Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl. San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl.
Of course, some bowl sponsorships actually sort of enhance the name. Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. That doesn’t sound bad. Pacific Life Holiday Bowl. Valero Alamo Bowl. Brut is that way with the Sun.
The Sun Bowl once was sponsored by John Hancock financial services, even was called the John Hancock Bowl for awhile, which made no sense, because John Hancock conjures images of Philadelphia, not El Paso.
Wells Fargo took on the Sun Bowl for awhile, which was totally cool. Wells Fargo makes you think of Death Valley Days and stagecoaches and the frontier. A Wells Fargo/El Paso marriage seems perfectly normal.
Vitalis sponsored the Sun Bowl for awhile, and just like Brut, who knew they still made that snake oil? Every Sunday morning until I was probably 12, my mom would baptize me and my brother with what had to be a quarter bottle of Vitalis each. No matter how long I live, I’ll never forget that smell and that feel. I assume I could get the same experience by dumping some Crisco oil on my head while frying eggs.
Anyway, good for Brut, staying in business and finding a way to let advertising-immune people like me know it. But I still think Joe Namath and some sexy girl is a better sales pitch than the Sun Bowl.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Good thing there’s not a Trojan Profalastic Bowl, cause guess what would be
in those little packets, Berry. Put on enough Brut and you may get to use
one of those.
Just got to thinking – no matter what the weather – rain or shine like win or lose – there is always stress which seems to be the common denominator of the most talked about college football stories since Christmas Day. My hope is that sanity will prevail and the “powers that be” will not become so overly stressed that they attempt make college football a “stress-free” environment. Ask Urban Meyer what kind of stress he prefers – going 1-11 or 11-1? Ask the Tech players – not just one or two of them – if they prefer the uncertainty of a new coach(es) and a new program and the stress that will come with that – to Leach’s quirks. I don’t condone placing an injured player in an ‘electrical’ room, but I would like to know the circumstances of this particular situation – how soon after the injury was this done, how many times had the player received medical attention, how many practices did the player miss, what were the ‘other’ surrounding issues or concerns Leach had for taking such action. If Leach is a John Macovich, then he needs to go. Thing is if that is the case, his players wouldn’t play for him and he would be asked to leave at some point. But, again, it sounds like a lot of stress involved for all in the Tech case. NFL Great whose son may be afraid he can’t measure up to his dad’s success – there’s some stress. Administrative pressure on Leach to
play the student. Who knows if these were even issues – that is the point! But success breeds stress, just ask the Colts whose coach or owner decided that winning wasn’t the real issue in last week’s game. The look on the player’s faces on the sidelines told more than any sports writer could ever write. An attempt to eliminate stress winds up producing more with more questions by the media and more chatter in the locker room.
Funny thing … stress. The smart folks know you can’t eliminate it. Just like the weather – no matter what the weather is, man can’t control it – he can at best manage it.
Hopefully, the gods of football will not overreact and destroy a great game that teaches young men as much about life and its stresses as it does about football.
PS – great programs aren’t built on popscicles! OU tried that once and ONCE is enough!
I had a bottle of Brut on my bathroom counter for the last 22 years. Never used it but probably dusted it off every year or so. I just could not bring myself to either use it or to throw it away. It got close to the trash can a few times but never quite made it.
That was the only good thing about the fire that destroyed my house last April.