I came across a reference on Twitter. Jack Ripper Beard Oil. WTF?
The product comes from an outfit called Monster Flesh & Mane, which sells grooming supplies for men.
All of our products are Monster-themed. We're fans of horror, Halloween, metal, games; all things that have monsters in common. But there's a little more to it than just that.
Some people see monsters and recoil. Others see monsters and see themselves. That's us - the perennial outsiders. In high school we were goths and metalheads. Some of us still are.
But the MONSTER brand doesn't belong to any one subculture. Anyone outside the norm can find something to identify with here...Because what MONSTER customers have in common is a love - even a need - for self expression, even (or especially) when that expression flies in the face of social norms.
Such unabashed individualists tend to identify with monsters. We're hip to the misunderstood. We get that society often shuns the different. The people who choose to be different anyway? Those are our people. That's what a MONSTER is.
Monster stuff? Cool. Not my cup of brand tea, but, hey.
Their product portfolio includes Rigor Mortis Pomade, Blood Bath Body Wash, Vampire Hunter Cologne.
Not exactly mainstream. I can't imagine the an ad campaign like the ancient English Leather ads in which the sexy woman - portraying herself as a pool playing or racquetball slamming feminist - winked out, "All my men wear English Leather. Or they wear nothing at all." ("All my men wear Rigor Mortis Pomade..." Doesn't have quite the same resonance.)
Those ads were considered so racy when they came out in the late 1970's, but we've come a long way, baby.
And now we have products aimed at the metalheads and goths who wouldn't have been caught dead wearing Old Spice, Aramis, or Paco Rabanne.
The infinite, fine-tuned economy. Have at it.
But naming a product after Jack the Ripper? An actual (although anonymous) serial killer who preyed on women in late 19th century London? Killing actual flesh and blood human beings?
Where would marketers stop if it became just fine and dandy to invoke the name of serial killers? Jeffrey Dahmer Antacids? A Ted Bundy ad for Volkswagen Beetles? John Wayne Gacy Clown Costumes?
Or are the recent serial killers just too fresh in our minds. I mean, some of us actually remember when Richard Speck murdered all those nursing students in Chicago. When the "Son of Sam" terrorized young couples in the NY Boroughs. When Charles Manson ran helter-skelter.
But, hey, Victorian England? Lost in the mists of time. Plus the women that Jack the Ripper slaughtered were all kind of prostitutes, weren't they?
Yes, the Ripper's victims were pretty much working as prostitutes. They were poor women - most of them having been married at one point, most with children - who'd fallen on hard times, and often into heavy drinking. And there weren't a ton of career options for women of a certain class when they had no husband or family to support them. (If you don't think we have much of a social safety net, just imagine what was on offer in Victorian England.) But the women murdered by Jack the Ripper were also flesh and mane humans. They worked as charwomen. The lone Irish -born victim, when drunk "would often be heard singing Irish songs." One sold flowers and antimacassars she made, "supplemented by casual prostitution."
Antimacassars, eh? The crocheted doily-like object that you put on the back of an upholstered chair so that the hair oil of the men folk wouldn't stain the upholstery. When I was a kid, we had those, so that if my father - what little hair he had left nicely Brycreemed - started to snooze in his comfy living room chair while listening to the ball game, he didn't leave a grease mark. Just the thing that would have protected a Victorian household from getting Rigor Mortis Pomade on the settee.
Of course, it wasn't enough for Monster Flesh & Mane to just borrow the Jack the Ripper name to use in their monster theme. Someone actually seemed to think it through:
Studies have shown that the two scents most enjoyed by men are lavender and vanilla. These were also popular among the people of Victorian England. So one can infer that any well-dressed man picking up ladies at the Ten Bells pub in Whitechapel might have been decked out in a blend of these two fragrances. And now your beard can be, too!
That well-dressed man? None other than - winky-wink - Jack the Ripper.
You know, sometimes it's a good thing when "society...shuns the different." And I'm guessing in this case that most women would shun a guy who uses Jack the Ripper Beard Oil. But even if it's most women, there are no doubt some out there who'd think it's just fine.
Please, Monster, there are plenty of monsters to draw on out there without invoking the name of a serial killer.
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