On Manliness

1. My day job is working as an editor at Canadian Business magazine. One of my favourite elements in the front section is our "Ode", which is meant as a sort obituary to failed companies, brands, or product lines, with a bit of a moral or life lesson at the end. Recent Odes we've published have been to the Hummer, Little Orphan Annie, and the Ford Mercury.

I wrote the most recent one, about Old Spice Guy, and in this case it is more of a success story:

Like all top performers, Old Spice Guy knows that it's always best to leave them wanting more. And so, with online viewership just starting to tail off and the copycats (including an execrable one from Cisco Systems) already appearing, the Old Spice Guy campaign was cancelled. Isaiah Mustafa is off to make a film with Jennifer Aniston, while Old Spice Guy himself retires to an honoured spot, next to the BMW film series "The Hire" and Burger King's Subservient Chicken, in the pantheon of social-marketing success.

2. On the same subject but a completely different tone -- my review of Sebastian Junger's War:

Like most books that give the grunts-eye-view of combat, War is really a book about masculinity, and the distinctly male ways of bonding, in-group/out-group dynamics, and the relationship between male sexuality and violence. These are the same themes that haunt the film, only amplified, and I don’t have much more to add than what I wrote in my review of Restrepo.