Thursday, November 19, 2009

TAG and AXE: Smells Like a Fallacy...



TAG and AXE body spray commercials are famous for containing blatant and hilariously faulty cause-effect fallacies. This fallacy is committed when a person assumes that one event causes another just because the events occur together. The error in this fallacy is that a causal conclusion is drawn without adequate justification. These commercials implicitly, rather than explicitly, state that if you wear TAG or AXE body spray, beautiful women will be strongly attracted to you. In one of the TAG ads, a guy puts TAG on before picking up his date from her parent’s house. To his surprise, the girl’s mom becomes attracted to him after smelling him as she answered the door. One AXE commercial features a woman pushing her elderly mother in a grocery store when she smells AXE wafting in her direction. She abandons her wheelchair ridden mother and cozies up to the store employee stacking cans, dancing suggestively around him. These commercials incorrectly associate wearing AXE or TAG body spray with success in the female department.

LINKS!
Mom Makes a Pass
The "AXE Effect"

5 comments:

  1. This are certainly great examples of cause-effect fallacies. However, at some point, would you argue that these commercials assume that their audience will realize that these kinds of "results" are unrealistic? What I am suggesting is that, while the commercials are clearly fallacies, it is possible that the companies use this format more for entertainment value (primarily amongst their male audience) rather than to market their product on the basis of being able to pick up attractive women. Anyway, you post was a great look at a fallacy in modern America.

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  2. I agree that the approach of these companies is clearly entertainment oriented. However extremely it is depicted in the commercials, I still think these companies are hinting that women will "enjoy," if you will, the scent of the body sprays. I think having making the commercial entertaining is just an added bonus.

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  3. I think that axe smells hawt
    --xoxo hollister hottie(:

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  4. Or maybe Axe/Tag attracts idiots who can't spell hot?^^^^^^^

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  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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