I just ran across an online ad featuring a motorcycle being used as a prop to help romance and sell what appeared to be hipster laundry soap packets with many different scented options.
Curious, I went to the company’s website which is here.
I wanted to see if the motorcycle was also being used anywhere on the website, or was only in an ad that targeted me, a known motorcycle-interested person.
The bike was nowhere to be seen on the company website but I was more than a little astonished at how romantically the soap pods were being presented. Online marketing techniques and technologies today are often overwhelming, and yet to younger consumers everything about this apparently (?) seems normal.
There is a famous saying or quote somewhere which goes (approximately): “sometimes a ____ is just a ___.” I don’t remember who famously spoke it*, or what the two items in that sentence were, but just about any proper noun could be used. "Sometimes a flower is just a flower.”, or whatever.
Catching myself shaking my head slightly as I explored the elaborate Laundry Sauce website while also thinking “Sometimes a sachet of laundry soap is just a sachet of laundry soap.” was like looking closely into a mirror at the increasing array of wrinkles on my face while that distortion-free reflection is screaming back: “You are an old old man now, and going forward less and less about the world surrounding you is going to make much sense. Get over it!”
Though people have publicly identified their trades and guilds for centuries, formalized marketing always seemed synchronized with the beginnings of the industrial revolution (1800-ish) and with the start of serially produced and widely distributed goods.
When I arrived in the middle of the last century things were already moving quickly. Ivory soap was 99 and 44 hundredths of a percent ‘pure’. “It floats!” the soap marketers proclaimed. Laundry soaps soon split into powders and liquids, then further into ‘fresh scented’ and ‘unscented’, and today we have this emotionally complex Laundry Sauce website. Plus the infinity of similar sites for every other kind of product and service.
Oh. My. G-d. Does all this ever feel like the rich/developed/advanced world has gone off the deep end. But it hasn’t. It’s just me becoming old. When I first arrived, Ivory soap seemed nice but overly boring. During my young-adult years as a consumer, the unscented version of liquid Tide laundry soap (and other similar brands) seemed normal. I’ll probably purchase that product for the rest of my life.
There has been much solid research revealing how we humans imprint most strongly on those things we encounter and experience during adolescence. And how once imprinted we return to those tastes, ideas, preferences and values for the rest of our lives. A well-known example of this is how our individual taste in popular music is formed most strongly during this part of our lives, and for the rest of our years those are the songs and melodies we most enjoy hearing. For those just a few years older than I, it’s Elvis, Chuck Barry and Buddy Holly. For those exactly my age it’s the Beatles, Dylan and The Rolling Stones. For those a little younger it’s Elton John, Bruce Springsteen and Prince. Go way back to the late nineteen forties and you’ll find a few super-elders still breathing who prefer Frank Sinatra and Doris Day. Serious books have been written about how emotional brain-stuff like this works.
Circling back to motorcycles, here’s the ad selling today’s young adults laundry soap using a studio picture of a traditional looking motorcycle:
Yes indeed-y. Yeah. “Smell good. Look good. Feel good.” You go, kids. And that Enfield is a very good choice if you want to own and ride a good-looking classic to smell, look and feel good on. It is a modern retro-design which is made in India, so it’s available here at a very good price. Comes with a built-in versatility and all-around riding functionality every well-conceived standard motorcycle does. This example is big enough to load up and tour widely on, yet small enough to easily manage the traffic, parking and garaging necessary in typical day to day commuting. It would be easy to maintain and take care of, too, because of its intentional simplicity. Over time and miles, it will wear whatever patina it acquires very well. Scratches and dirt won’t matter. This is a good simple all-around-rideable bike. And if fitted with mildly open-treaded tires it should easily handle gravel and two track dirt roads ok too, if you are not going nuts with the throttle.
This is an Aerostich blog, so where does that leave our products? About the same place as that modern re-creation of a classic Enfield, I hope. Our goods are also simple, durable and all-around useful. They are modernized interpretations of traditional rider’s gear, which means they are not stylized moto-fashion masterpieces. If the work clothes company Carhartt made a high-tech textile riders jacket it would probably be as simple, durable and functional as our Darien. Same for pants: AD-1s or Utility. And our one-piece R-3 and Roadcrafter Classic armored coveralls are similarly basic, comfortable and functional as long-term working investments in gear. Just like Carhartt work clothing, Aerostich gear is ride clothing made to work for years, in all foreseeable riding situations. The rest is mostly details.
Finally, there’s nothing wrong with owning and riding the latest-greatest bike, or any machine pinpoint specialized for whatever riding situations and applications you are pursuing. Your purposeful choices and self-projections onto such models power all manufacturers to continually innovate. The same is so for makers of rider’s gear, fashion-oriented or otherwise. Like Carhartt and Enfield, we are focused on all-purpose comfort, versatility, durability and utility, so our designs change only very slightly from year to year. If at all. They are more like equipment than fashion. More like a conservative formal suit you can wear for a decade or longer and it doesn’t get out of fashion. And when (…or if) you ever decide to wash your Aerostich gear, you can probably skip the Laundry Sauce and just go with any old-school laundry soap. Just remember to first check all the pockets for forgotten items, remove the impact armor, zip all the zippers closed, and set the machine to do a double or triple rinse.
- Mr. Subjective, Nov 22, 2024
PS - Everyone likes to “Smell good, Look good, and Feel good”, and if you ride a lot in your daily life, or on a long road trip, you’ll always get at least two out of three. Which, the more you think about it, is actually a pretty great deal.
*“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – widely (mis)attributed to psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
A big finned parallel vertical twin with universal tires and a bash plate, so perfect and imprinted to a T. Thanks Andy for a wonderful good feeling and invoking read.
Honestly, like some others I thought someone had tipped a very cheezy pizza into the saddlebag. My very first thought was, ‘ooh, that’s gonna stain’, followed quickly by ‘anything else that ever goes in that saddlebag is gonna get awful greasy’. I absolutely refute any implications that I may have at some indeterminable time gone past, used a saddlebag in a similar manner, or that I obviously don’t know what soap is (did someone say you can wash motorbicycling jackets? Crazy).
That quote is attributed to our old, debunked friend Siggy Freud – “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar”.
I find the soap ad very intriguing, as well. It looks very much like a pizza snack presented in a quick order box. Perhaps my R3 should be restyled to look like a pepperoni and sausage pie so that I could be more fashion forward.
I thought it was sometimes a pretty girl is just a pretty girl. Anyways, Carhartt, yeah! I was in a bar in a suburb of Phoenix AZ [Cave Creek] when a guy walked up and asked me in all seriousness “Who does your Carhartt’s?” I said “What?” He meant did I have a provider that breaks clothing in to make it look used, and who was it. I was gobsmacked. But hey! There’s a new job for me; wearing clothes then selling them…..Love my ’stich and when you guys washed it [thanks] it just got better Cheers
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